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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/655-h.zip b/655-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c8ec0b --- /dev/null +++ b/655-h.zip diff --git a/655-h/655-h.htm b/655-h/655-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ba418ab --- /dev/null +++ b/655-h/655-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,13373 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by +Mrs. Sutherland Orr + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life and Letters of Robert Browning + +Author: Mrs. Sutherland Orr + +Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #655] +Last Updated: February 4, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT *** + + + + +Produced by Alan Light and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h1> + LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING + </h1> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + by Mrs. Sutherland Orr + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h4> + Second Edition + </h4> + <p> + <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + Preface + </h2> + <p> + Such letters of Mr. Browning's as appear, whole or in part, in the present + volume have been in most cases given to me by the persons to whom they + were addressed, or copied by Miss Browning from the originals under her + care; but I owe to the daughter of the Rev. W. J. Fox—Mrs. Bridell + Fox—those written to her father and to Miss Flower; the two + interesting extracts from her father's correspondence with herself and Mr. + Browning's note to Mr. Robertson. + </p> + <p> + For my general material I have been largely indebted to Miss Browning. Her + memory was the only existing record of her brother's boyhood and youth. It + has been to me an unfailing as well as always accessible authority for + that subsequent period of his life which I could only know in disconnected + facts or his own fragmentary reminiscences. It is less true, indeed, to + say that she has greatly helped me in writing this short biography than + that without her help it could never have been undertaken. + </p> + <p> + I thank my friends Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell and Miss Hickey for their + invaluable assistance in preparing the book for, and carrying it through + the press; and I acknowledge with real gratitude the advantages derived by + it from Mr. Dykes Campbell's large literary experience in his very careful + final revision of the proofs. + </p> + <p> + A. Orr. April 22, 1891. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0022"> Chapter 1 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0023"> Chapter 2 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0024"> Chapter 3 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0025"> Chapter 4 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0026"> Chapter 5 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0027"> Chapter 6 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0028"> Chapter 7 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0029"> Chapter 8 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0030"> Chapter 9 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0031"> Chapter 10 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0032"> Chapter 11 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0033"> Chapter 12 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0034"> Chapter 13 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0035"> Chapter 14 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0036"> Chapter 15 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0037"> Chapter 16 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0038"> Chapter 17 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0039"> Chapter 18 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0040"> Chapter 19 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0041"> Chapter 20 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0042"> Chapter 21 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0043"> Chapter 22 </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_CONC"> Conclusion </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> Index </a> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 1 Origin of the Browning Family—Robert Browning's + </h2> + <p> + Grandfather—His position and Character—His first and second + Marriage—Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father—Alleged + Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother—Existing + Evidence against it—The Grandmother's Portrait. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 2 Robert Browning's Father—His Position in Life—Comparison + </h2> + <p> + between him and his Son—Tenderness towards his Son—Outline of + his Habits and Character—His Death—Significant Newspaper + Paragraph—Letter of Mr. Locker—Lampson—Robert Browning's + Mother—Her Character and Antecedents—Their Influence upon her + Son—Nervous Delicacy imparted to both her Children—Its special + Evidences in her Son. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 3 1812-1826 Birth of Robert Browning—His Childhood + </h2> + <p> + and Schooldays—Restless Temperament—Brilliant Mental + Endowments—Incidental Peculiarities—Strong Religious Feeling—Passionate + Attachment to his Mother; Grief at first Separation—Fondness for + Animals—Experiences of School Life—Extensive Reading—Early + Attempts in Verse—Letter from his Father concerning them—Spurious + Poems in Circulation—'Incondita'—Mr. Fox—Miss Flower. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 4 1826-1833 First Impressions of Keats and Shelley—Prolonged + </h2> + <p> + Influence of Shelley—Details of Home Education—Its Effects—Youthful + Restlessness—Counteracting Love of Home—Early Friendships: + Alfred Domett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes—Choice of Poetry as + a Profession—Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning + them—Interest in Art—Love of good Theatrical Performances—Talent + for Acting—Final Preparation for Literary Life. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 5 1833-1835 'Pauline'—Letters to Mr. Fox—Publication + of the + </h2> + <p> + Poem; chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics—Mr. Fox's + Review in the 'Monthly Repository'; other Notices—Russian Journey—Desired + diplomatic Appointment—Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of + Appearance—'The Trifler'—M. de Ripert-Monclar—'Paracelsus'—Letters + to Mr. Fox concerning it; its Publication—Incidental Origin of + 'Paracelsus'; its inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'—Mr. + Fox's Review of it in the 'Monthly Repository'—Article in the + 'Examiner' by John Forster. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 6 1835-1838 Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars—Renewed + </h2> + <p> + Intercourse with the second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather—Reuben + Browning—William Shergold Browning—Visitors at Hatcham—Thomas + Carlyle—Social Life—New Friends and Acquaintance—Introduction + to Macready—New Year's Eve at Elm Place—Introduction to John + Forster—Miss Fanny Haworth—Miss Martineau—Serjeant + Talfourd—The 'Ion' Supper—'Strafford'—Relations with + Macready—Performance of 'Strafford'—Letters concerning it from + Mr. Browning and Miss Flower—Personal Glimpses of Robert Browning—Rival + Forms of Dramatic Inspiration—Relation of 'Strafford' to 'Sordello'—Mr. + Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 7 1838-1841 First Italian Journey—Letters to Miss Haworth—Mr. + </h2> + <p> + John Kenyon—'Sordello'—Letter to Miss Flower—'Pippa + Passes'—'Bells and Pomegranates'. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 8 1841-1844 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'—Letters to Mr. + </h2> + <p> + Frank Hill; Lady Martin—Charles Dickens—Other Dramas and Minor + Poems—Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower—Second + Italian Journey; Naples—E. J. Trelawney—Stendhal. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 9 1844-1849 Introduction to Miss Barrett—Engagement—Motives + </h2> + <p> + for Secrecy—Marriage—Journey to Italy—Extract of Letter + from Mr. Fox—Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford—Life at + Pisa—Vallombrosa—Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle—Proposed + British Mission to the Vatican—Father Prout—Palazzo Guidi—Fano; + Ancona—'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 10 1849-1852 Death of Mr. Browning's Mother—Birth of his + </h2> + <p> + Son—Mrs. Browning's Letters continued—Baths of Lucca—Florence + again—Venice—Margaret Fuller Ossoli—Visit to England—Winter + in Paris—Carlyle—George Sand—Alfred de Musset. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 11 1852-1855 M. Joseph Milsand—His close Friendship with + </h2> + <p> + Mr. Browning; Mrs. Browning's Impression of him—New Edition of Mr. + Browning's Poems—'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'—'Essay' on + Shelley—Summer in London—Dante Gabriel Rossetti—Florence; + secluded Life—Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Browning—'Colombe's + Birthday'—Baths of Lucca—Mrs. Browning's Letters—Winter + in Rome—Mr. and Mrs. Story—Mrs. Sartoris—Mrs. Fanny + Kemble—Summer in London—Tennyson—Ruskin. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 12 1855-1858 'Men and Women'—'Karshook'—'Two in the + </h2> + <p> + Campagna'—Winter in Paris; Lady Elgin—'Aurora Leigh'—Death + of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett—Penini—Mrs. Browning's Letters + to Miss Browning—The Florentine Carnival—Baths of Lucca—Spiritualism—Mr. + Kirkup; Count Ginnasi—Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox—Havre. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 13 1858-1861 Mrs. Browning's Illness—Siena—Letter from + Mr. + </h2> + <p> + Browning to Mr. Leighton—Mrs. Browning's Letters continued—Walter + Savage Landor—Winter in Rome—Mr. Val Prinsep—Friends in + Rome: Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright—Multiplying Social Relations—Massimo + d'Azeglio—Siena again—Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's + Sister—Mr. Browning's Occupations—Madame du Quaire—Mrs. + Browning's last Illness and Death. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 14 1861-1863 Miss Blagden—Letters from Mr. Browning to + </h2> + <p> + Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton—His Feeling in regard to Funeral + Ceremonies—Establishment in London—Plan of Life—Letter + to Madame du Quaire—Miss Arabel Barrett—Biarritz—Letters + to Miss Blagden—Conception of 'The Ring and the Book'—Biographical + Indiscretion—New Edition of his Works—Mr. and Mrs. Procter. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 15 1863-1869 Pornic—'James Lee's Wife'—Meeting at Mr. + F. + </h2> + <p> + Palgrave's—Letters to Miss Blagden—His own Estimate of his + Work—His Father's Illness and Death; Miss Browning—Le Croisic—Academic + Honours; Letter to the Master of Balliol—Death of Miss Barrett—Audierne—Uniform + Edition of his Works—His rising Fame—'Dramatis Personae'—'The + Ring and the Book'; Character of Pompilia. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 16 1869-1873 Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower—Scotland; Visit to + </h2> + <p> + Lady Ashburton—Letters to Miss Blagden—St.-Aubin; The + Franco-Prussian War—'Herve Riel'—Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith—'Balaustion's + Adventure'; 'Prince Hohenstiel—Schwangau'—'Fifine at the Fair'—Mistaken + Theories of Mr. Browning's Work—St.-Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap + Country'. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 17 1873-1878 London Life—Love of Music—Miss + </h2> + <p> + Egerton-Smith—Periodical Nervous Exhaustion—Mers; + 'Aristophanes' Apology'—'Agamemnon'—'The Inn Album'—'Pacchiarotto + and other Poems'—Visits to Oxford and Cambridge—Letters to + Mrs. Fitz-Gerald—St. Andrews; Letter from Professor Knight—In + the Savoyard Mountains—Death of Miss Egerton-Smith—'La + Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of Croisic'—Selections from his Works. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 18 1878-1884 He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. + </h2> + <p> + Fitz-Gerald—Venice—Favourite Alpine Retreats—Mrs. Arthur + Bronson—Life in Venice—A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre—Mr. + Cholmondeley—Mr. Browning's Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter + to Mrs. Charles Skirrow—'Dramatic Idyls'—'Jocoseria'—'Ferishtah's + Fancies'. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 19 1881-1887 The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. + </h2> + <p> + H. Hickey—His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. + Fitz-Gerald—Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter—Letter to Miss + Hickey; 'Strafford'—Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies—Letters + to Professor Knight—Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni—The + Goldoni Sonnet—Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni—Letters + to Mrs. Charles Skirrow—Mrs. Bloomfield Moore—Llangollen; Sir + Theodore and Lady Martin—Loss of old Friends—Foreign + Correspondent of the Royal Academy—'Parleyings with certain People + of Importance in their Day'. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 20 Constancy to Habit—Optimism—Belief in Providence—Political + </h2> + <p> + Opinions—His Friendships—Reverence for Genius—Attitude + towards his Public—Attitude towards his Work—Habits of Work—His + Reading—Conversational Powers—Impulsiveness and Reserve—Nervous + Peculiarities—His Benevolence—His Attitude towards Women. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 21 1887-1889 Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning—Removal to De + </h2> + <p> + Vere Gardens—Symptoms of failing Strength—New Poems; New + Edition of his Works—Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and + Lady Martin—Primiero and Venice—Letters to Miss Keep—The + last Year in London—Asolo—Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. + Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 22 1889 Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo—Venice—Letter + </h2> + <p> + to Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett—Lines in the 'Athenaeum'—Letter to + Miss Keep—Illness—Death—Funeral Ceremonial at Venice—Publication + of 'Asolando'—Interment in Poets' Corner. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 1 + </h2> + <p> + Origin of the Browning Family—Robert Browning's Grandfather—His + position and Character—His first and second Marriage—Unkindness + towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father—Alleged Infusion of + West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother—Existing + Evidence against it—The Grandmother's Portrait. + </p> + <p> + A belief was current in Mr. Browning's lifetime that he had Jewish blood + in his veins. It received outward support from certain accidents of his + life, from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature, from + his friendship for various members of the Jewish community in London. It + might well have yielded to the fact of his never claiming the kinship, + which could not have existed without his knowledge, and which, if he had + known it, he would, by reason of these very sympathies, have been the last + person to disavow. The results of more recent and more systematic inquiry + have shown the belief to be unfounded. + </p> + <p> + Our poet sprang, on the father's side, from an obscure or, as family + tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock settled, at + an early period of our history, in the south, and probably also + south-west, of England. A line of Brownings owned the manors of + Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond, in north-west Dorsetshire; their last + representative disappeared—or was believed to do so—in the + time of Henry VII., their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of + Ilchester, who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different + parts of the country: in two cases with the affix of 'esquire', in two + also, though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge, + where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear. Its cradle, + as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge, on the + Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors, of the third + and fourth generations, held, as we understand, a modest but independent + social position. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others + referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles, + to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall. +</pre> + <p> + This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better with our + impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree which more + palpably connected him with the 'knightly' and 'squirely' families whose + name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life to + which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that genius + and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense, the product + of virgin soil; and although the varied elements which entered into its + growth were racial as well as cultural, and inherited as well as absorbed, + the evidence of its strong natural or physical basis remains undisturbed. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in the + matter. He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical + past which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of + his family. He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to him + from his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to do + so, a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle, in + years gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason to think + about his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason to care about + them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case, the most important + fact in his family history. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi, + Suis le seigneur de Conti, +</pre> + <p> + he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally questioned + him about it. + </p> + <p> + Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning's + grandfather, also a Robert Browning, who obtained through Lord + Shaftesbury's influence a clerkship in the Bank of England, and entered on + it when barely twenty, in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose to the + position of Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an important one, and + which brought him into contact with the leading financiers of the day. He + became also a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery Company, and took + part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riots of 1789. He was an + able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman, very much of the + provincial type; his literary tastes being limited to the Bible and 'Tom + Jones', both of which he is said to have read through once a year. He + possessed a handsome person and, probably, a vigorous constitution, since + he lived to the age of eighty-four, though frequently tormented by gout; a + circumstance which may help to account for his not having seen much of his + grandchildren, the poet and his sister; we are indeed told that he + particularly dreaded the lively boy's vicinity to his afflicted foot. He + married, in 1778, Margaret, daughter of a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with + Miss Seymour; and who was born in the West Indies and had inherited + property there. They had three children: Robert, the poet's father; a + daughter, who lived an uneventful life and plays no part in the family + history; and another son who died an infant. The Creole mother died also + when her eldest boy was only seven years old, and passed out of his memory + in all but an indistinct impression of having seen her lying in her + coffin. Five years later the widower married a Miss Smith, who gave him a + large family. + </p> + <p> + This second marriage of Mr. Browning's was a critical event in the life of + his eldest son; it gave him, to all appearance, two step-parents instead + of one. There could have been little sympathy between his father and + himself, for no two persons were ever more unlike, but there was yet + another cause for the systematic unkindness under which the lad grew up. + Mr. Browning fell, as a hard man easily does, greatly under the influence + of his second wife, and this influence was made by her to subserve the + interests of a more than natural jealousy of her predecessor. An early + instance of this was her banishing the dead lady's portrait to a garret, + on the plea that her husband did not need two wives. The son could be no + burden upon her because he had a little income, derived from his mother's + brother; but this, probably, only heightened her ill-will towards him. + When he was old enough to go to a University, and very desirous of going—when, + moreover, he offered to do so at his own cost—she induced his father + to forbid it, because, she urged, they could not afford to send their + other sons to college. An earlier ambition of his had been to become an + artist; but when he showed his first completed picture to his father, the + latter turned away and refused to look at it. He gave himself the + finishing stroke in the parental eyes, by throwing up a lucrative + employment which he had held for a short time on his mother's West Indian + property, in disgust at the system of slave labour which was still in + force there; and he paid for this unpractical conduct as soon as he was of + age, by the compulsory reimbursement of all the expenses which his father, + up to that date, had incurred for him; and by the loss of his mother's + fortune, which, at the time of her marriage, had not been settled upon + her. It was probably in despair of doing anything better, that, soon after + this, in his twenty-second year, he also became a clerk in the Bank of + England. He married and settled in Camberwell, in 1811; his son and + daughter were born, respectively, in 1812 and 1814. He became a widower in + 1849; and when, four years later, he had completed his term of service at + the Bank, he went with his daughter to Paris, where they resided until his + death in 1866. + </p> + <p> + Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a conviction, + that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole in the strict sense + of the term, that of a person born of white parents in the West Indies, + and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood passed from her to her son and + grandson. Such an occurrence was, on the face of it, not impossible, and + would be absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I think I may add, to + that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and his father were what + we know them, and if negro blood had any part in their composition, it was + no worse for them, and so much the better for the negro. But many persons + among us are very averse to the idea of such a cross; I believe its + assertion, in the present case, to be entirely mistaken; I prefer, + therefore, touching on the facts alleged in favour of it, to passing them + over in a silence which might be taken to mean indifference, but might + also be interpreted into assent. + </p> + <p> + We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life, that a nephew who + saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian. He neither had nor + could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England at the time + specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior was residing on his + mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, his appearance was held to + justify his being placed in church among the coloured members of the + congregation. We are assured in the strongest terms that the story has no + foundation, and this by a gentleman whose authority in all matters + concerning the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise accepted as + conclusive. If the anecdote were true it would be a singular circumstance + that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing negro heads, and thus + obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association with them. + </p> + <p> + I do not know the exact physical indications by which a dark strain is + perceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes, hair, + and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons who in + the present case are supposed to have borne them. The poet's father had + light blue eyes and, I am assured by those who knew him best, a clear, + ruddy complexion. His appearance induced strangers passing him in the + Paris streets to remark, 'C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whiteness of + Miss Browning's skin was modified in her brother by a sallow tinge + sufficiently explained by frequent disturbance of the liver; but it never + affected the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair, which + grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black, is + spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth, as + golden. It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his early friend + Mr. Fox, who grew up in the little social circle to which he belonged, + never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him; and a lady who made + his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year, wrote a sonnet upon him, + beginning with these words: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Thy brow is calm, young Poet—pale and clear + As a moonlighted statue. +</pre> + <p> + The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve, + however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on the + main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities concerning + it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merely contracted + form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized in Venice. It + became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; and, by a strange + coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace now owned by Mr. + Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. The present Contessa Widman has + lately restored her own palace, which was falling into ruin. + </p> + <p> + That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrage to + her husband's second wife, has hung for many years in her grandson's + dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It represents a stately + woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the face or hair betrays any + indication of possible dark blood, it is imperceptible to the general + observer, and must be of too slight and fugitive a nature to enter into + the discussion. A long curl touches one shoulder. One hand rests upon a + copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which was held to be the proper study and + recreation of cultivated women in those days. The picture was painted by + Wright of Derby. + </p> + <p> + A brother of this lady was an adventurous traveller, and was said to have + penetrated farther into the interior of Africa than any other European of + his time. His violent death will be found recorded in a singular + experience of the poet's middle life. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 2 + </h2> + <p> + Robert Browning's Father—His Position in Life—Comparison + between him and his Son—Tenderness towards his Son—Outline of + his Habits and Character—His Death—Significant Newspaper + Paragraph—Letter of Mr. Locker-Lampson—Robert Browning's + Mother—Her Character and Antecedents—Their Influence upon her + Son—Nervous Delicacy imparted to both her Children—Its special + Evidences in her Son. + </p> + <p> + It was almost a matter of course that Robert Browning's father should be + disinclined for bank work. We are told, and can easily imagine, that he + was not so good an official as the grandfather; we know that he did not + rise so high, nor draw so large a salary. But he made the best of his + position for his family's sake, and it was at that time both more + important and more lucrative than such appointments have since become. Its + emoluments could be increased by many honourable means not covered by the + regular salary. The working-day was short, and every additional hour's + service well paid. To be enrolled on the night-watch was also very + remunerative; there were enormous perquisites in pens, paper, and + sealing-wax.* Mr. Browning availed himself of these opportunities of + adding to his income, and was thus enabled, with the help of his private + means, to gratify his scholarly and artistic tastes, and give his children + the benefit of a very liberal education—the one distinct ideal of + success in life which such a nature as his could form. Constituted as he + was, he probably suffered very little through the paternal unkindness + which had forced him into an uncongenial career. Its only palpable result + was to make him a more anxiously indulgent parent when his own time came. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * I have been told that, far from becoming careless in the + use of these things from his practically unbounded command + of them, he developed for them an almost superstitious + reverence. He could never endure to see a scrap of writing- + paper wasted. +</pre> + <p> + Many circumstances conspired to secure to the coming poet a happier + childhood and youth than his father had had. His path was to be smoothed + not only by natural affection and conscientious care, but by literary and + artistic sympathy. The second Mr. Browning differed, in certain respects, + as much from the third as from the first. There were, nevertheless, strong + points in which, if he did not resemble, he at least distinctly + foreshadowed him; and the genius of the one would lack some possible + explanation if we did not recognize in great measure its organized + material in the other. Much, indeed, that was genius in the son existed as + talent in the father. The moral nature of the younger man diverged from + that of the older, though retaining strong points of similarity; but the + mental equipments of the two differed far less in themselves than in the + different uses to which temperament and circumstances trained them. + </p> + <p> + The most salient intellectual characteristic of Mr. Browning senior was + his passion for reading. In his daughter's words, 'he read in season, and + out of season;' and he not only read, but remembered. As a schoolboy, he + knew by heart the first book of the 'Iliad', and all the odes of Horace; + and it shows how deeply the classical part of his training must have + entered into him, that he was wont, in later life, to soothe his little + boy to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. It was one of his + amusements at school to organize Homeric combats among the boys, in which + the fighting was carried on in the manner of the Greeks and Trojans, and + he and his friend Kenyon would arm themselves with swords and shields, and + hack at each other lustily, exciting themselves to battle by insulting + speeches derived from the Homeric text.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * This anecdote is partly quoted from Mrs. Andrew Crosse, + who has introduced it into her article 'John Kenyon and his + Friends', + 'Temple Bar', April 1890. She herself received it from Mr. + Dykes Campbell. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Browning had also an extraordinary power of versifying, and taught his + son from babyhood the words he wished him to remember, by joining them to + a grotesque rhyme; the child learned all his Latin declensions in this + way. His love of art had been proved by his desire to adopt it as a + profession; his talent for it was evidenced by the life and power of the + sketches, often caricatures, which fell from his pen or pencil as easily + as written words. Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a very early + elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes (now in the + possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) through which his + grandfather impressed upon him the names and position of the principal + bones of the human body. + </p> + <p> + Even more remarkable than his delight in reading was the manner in which + Mr. Browning read. He carried into it all the preciseness of the scholar. + It was his habit when he bought a book—which was generally an old + one allowing of this addition—to have some pages of blank paper + bound into it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, or such + other supplementary matter as would enhance the interest, or assist the + mastering, of its contents; all written in a clear and firm though by no + means formal handwriting. More than one book thus treated by him has + passed through my hands, leaving in me, it need hardly be said, a stronger + impression of the owner's intellectual quality than the acquisition by him + of the finest library could have conveyed. One of the experiences which + disgusted him with St. Kitt's was the frustration by its authorities of an + attempt he was making to teach a negro boy to read, and the understanding + that all such educative action was prohibited. + </p> + <p> + In his faculties and attainments, as in his pleasures and appreciations, + he showed the simplicity and genuineness of a child. He was not only ready + to amuse, he could always identify himself with children, his love for + whom never failed him in even his latest years. His more than childlike + indifference to pecuniary advantages had been shown in early life. He gave + another proof of it after his wife's death, when he declined a proposal, + made to him by the Bank of England, to assist in founding one of its + branch establishments in Liverpool. He never indeed, personally, cared for + money, except as a means of acquiring old, i.e. rare books, for which he + had, as an acquaintance declared, the scent of a hound and the snap of a + bulldog. His eagerness to possess such treasures was only matched by the + generosity with which he parted with them; and his daughter well remembers + the feeling of angry suspicion with which she and her brother noted the + periodical arrival of a certain visitor who would be closeted with their + father for hours, and steal away before the supper time, when the family + would meet, with some precious parcel of books or prints under his arm. + </p> + <p> + It is almost superfluous to say that he was indifferent to creature + comforts. Miss Browning was convinced that, if on any occasion she had + said to him, 'There will be no dinner to-day,' he would only have looked + up from his book to reply, 'All right, my dear, it is of no consequence.' + In his bank-clerk days, when he sometimes dined in Town, he left one + restaurant with which he was not otherwise dissatisfied, because the + waiter always gave him the trouble of specifying what he would have to + eat. A hundred times that trouble would not have deterred him from a + kindly act. Of his goodness of heart, indeed, many distinct instances + might be given; but even this scanty outline of his life has rendered them + superfluous. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning enjoyed splendid physical health. His early love of reading + had not precluded a wholesome enjoyment of athletic sports; and he was, as + a boy, the fastest runner and best base-ball player in his school. He + died, like his father, at eighty-four (or rather, within a few days of + eighty-five), but, unlike him, he had never been ill; a French friend + exclaimed when all was over, 'Il n'a jamais ete vieux.' His faculties were + so unclouded up to the last moment that he could watch himself dying, and + speculate on the nature of the change which was befalling him. 'What do + you think death is, Robert?' he said to his son; 'is it a fainting, or is + it a pang?' A notice of his decease appeared in an American newspaper. It + was written by an unknown hand, and bears a stamp of genuineness which + renders the greater part of it worth quoting. + </p> + <p> + 'He was not only a ruddy, active man, with fine hair, that retained its + strength and brownness to the last, but he had a courageous spirit and a + remarkably intelligent mind. He was a man of the finest culture, and was + often, and never vainly, consulted by his son Robert concerning the more + recondite facts relating to the old characters, whose bones that poet + liked so well to disturb. His knowledge of old French, Spanish, and + Italian literature was wonderful. The old man went smiling and peaceful to + his long rest, preserving his faculties to the last, insomuch that the + physician, astonished at his continued calmness and good humour, turned to + his daughter, and said in a low voice, "Does this gentleman know that he + is dying?" The daughter said in a voice which the father could hear, "He + knows it;" and the old man said with a quiet smile, "Death is no enemy in + my eyes." His last words were spoken to his son Robert, who was fanning + him, "I fear I am wearying you, dear."' + </p> + <p> + Four years later one of his English acquaintances in Paris, Mr. Frederick + Locker, now Mr. Locker-Lampson, wrote to Robert Browning as follows: + </p> + <p> + Dec. 26, 1870. + </p> + <p> + My dear Browning,—I have always thought that you or Miss Browning, + or some other capable person, should draw up a sketch of your excellent + father so that, hereafter, it might be known what an interesting man he + was. + </p> + <p> + I used often to meet you in Paris, at Lady Elgin's. She had a genuine + taste for poetry, and she liked being read to, and I remember you gave her + a copy of Keats' poems, and you used often to read his poetry to her. Lady + Elgin died in 1860, and I think it was in that year that Lady Charlotte + and I saw the most of Mr. Browning.* He was then quite an elderly man, if + years could make him so, but he had so much vivacity of manner, and such + simplicity and freshness of mind, that it was difficult to think him old. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Locker was then married to Lady Charlotte Bruce, Lady + Elgin's daughter. +</pre> + <p> + I remember, he and your sister lived in an apartment in the Rue de + Grenelle, St. Germain, in quite a simple fashion, much in the way that + most people live in Paris, and in the way that all sensible people would + wish to live all over the world. + </p> + <p> + Your father and I had at least one taste and affection in common. He liked + hunting the old bookstalls on the 'quais', and he had a great love and + admiration for Hogarth; and he possessed several of Hogarth's engravings, + some in rare and early states of the plate; and he would relate with glee + the circumstances under which he had picked them up, and at so small a + price too! However, he had none of the 'petit-maitre' weakness of the + ordinary collector, which is so common, and which I own to!—such as + an infatuation for tall copies, and wide margins. + </p> + <p> + I remember your father was fond of drawing in a rough and ready fashion; + he had plenty of talent, I should think not very great cultivation; but + quite enough to serve his purpose, and to amuse his friends. He had a + thoroughly lively and <i>healthy</i> interest in your poetry, and he + showed me some of your boyish attempts at versification. + </p> + <p> + Taking your dear father altogether, I quite believe him to have been one + of those men—interesting men—whom the world never hears of. + Perhaps he was shy—at any rate he was much less known than he ought + to have been; and now, perhaps, he only remains in the recollection of his + family, and of one or two superior people (like myself!) who were capable + of appreciating him. My dear Browning, I really hope you will draw up a + slight sketch of your father before it is too late. Yours, Frederick + Locker. + </p> + <p> + The judgments thus expressed twenty years ago are cordially re-stated in + the letter in which Mr. Locker-Lampson authorizes me to publish them. The + desired memoir was never written; but the few details which I have given + of the older Mr. Browning's life and character may perhaps stand for it. + </p> + <p> + With regard to the 'strict dissent' with which her parents have been + taxed, Miss Browning writes to me: 'My father was born and educated in the + Church of England, and, for many years before his death, lived in her + communion. He became a Dissenter in middle life, and my mother, born and + brought up in the Kirk of Scotland, became one also; but they could not be + called bigoted, since we always in the evening attended the preaching of + the Rev. Henry Melvill* (afterwards Canon of St. Paul's), whose sermons + Robert much admired.'** + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * At Camden Chapel, Camberwell. + + ** Mr. Browning was much interested, in later years, in + hearing Canon, perhaps then already Archdeacon, Farrar extol + his eloquence and ask whether he had known him. Mr. Ruskin + also spoke of him with admiration. +</pre> + <p> + Little need be said about the poet's mother. She was spoken of by Carlyle + as 'the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman.' Mr. Kenyon declared that + such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made it wherever + they were. But her character was all resumed in her son's words, spoken + with the tremulous emotion which so often accompanied his allusion to + those he had loved and lost: 'She was a divine woman.' She was Scotch on + the maternal side, and her kindly, gentle, but distinctly evangelical + Christianity must have been derived from that source. Her father, William + Wiedemann, a ship-owner, was a Hamburg German settled in Dundee, and has + been described by Mr. Browning as an accomplished draughtsman and + musician. She herself had nothing of the artist about her, though we hear + of her sometimes playing the piano; in all her goodness and sweetness she + seems to have been somewhat matter-of-fact. But there is abundant indirect + evidence of Mr. Browning's love of music having come to him through her, + and we are certainly justified in holding the Scottish-German descent as + accountable, in great measure at least, for the metaphysical quality so + early apparent in the poet's mind, and of which we find no evidence in + that of his father. His strong religious instincts must have been derived + from both parents, though most anxiously fostered by his mother. + </p> + <p> + There is yet another point on which Mrs. Browning must have influenced the + life and destinies of her son, that of physical health, or, at least, + nervous constitution. She was a delicate woman, very anaemic during her + later years, and a martyr to neuralgia, which was perhaps a symptom of + this condition. The acute ailment reproduced itself in her daughter in + spite of an otherwise vigorous constitution. With the brother, the + inheritance of suffering was not less surely present, if more difficult to + trace. We have been accustomed to speaking of him as a brilliantly healthy + man; he was healthy, even strong, in many essential respects. Until past + the age of seventy he could take long walks without fatigue, and endure an + amount of social and general physical strain which would have tried many + younger men. He carried on until the last a large, if not always serious, + correspondence, and only within the latest months, perhaps weeks of his + life, did his letters even suggest that physical brain-power was failing + him. He had, within the limits which his death has assigned to it, a + considerable recuperative power. His consciousness of health was vivid, so + long as he was well; and it was only towards the end that the faith in his + probable length of days occasionally deserted him. But he died of no acute + disease, more than seven years younger than his father, having long + carried with him external marks of age from which his father remained + exempt. Till towards the age of forty he suffered from attacks of + sore-throat, not frequent, but of an angry kind. He was constantly + troubled by imperfect action of the liver, though no doctor pronounced the + evil serious. I have spoken of this in reference to his complexion. During + the last twenty years, if not for longer, he rarely spent a winter without + a suffocating cold and cough; within the last five, asthmatic symptoms + established themselves; and when he sank under what was perhaps his first + real attack of bronchitis it was not because the attack was very severe, + but because the heart was exhausted. The circumstances of his death + recalled that of his mother; and we might carry the sad analogy still + farther in his increasing pallor, and the slow and not strong pulse which + always characterized him. This would perhaps be a mistake. It is difficult + to reconcile any idea of bloodlessness with the bounding vitality of his + younger body and mind. Any symptom of organic disease could scarcely, in + his case, have been overlooked. But so much is certain: he was conscious + of what he called a nervousness of nature which neither father nor + grandfather could have bequeathed to him. He imputed to this, or, in other + words, to an undue physical sensitiveness to mental causes of irritation, + his proneness to deranged liver, and the asthmatic conditions which he + believed, rightly or wrongly, to be produced by it. He was perhaps + mistaken in some of his inferences, but he was not mistaken in the fact. + He had the pleasures as well as the pains of this nervous temperament; its + quick response to every congenial stimulus of physical atmosphere, and + human contact. It heightened the enjoyment, perhaps exaggerated the + consciousness of his physical powers. It also certainly in his later years + led him to overdraw them. Many persons have believed that he could not + live without society; a prolonged seclusion from it would, for obvious + reasons, have been unsuited to him. But the excited gaiety which to the + last he carried into every social gathering was often primarily the result + of a moral and physical effort which his temperament prompted, but his + strength could not always justify. Nature avenged herself in recurrent + periods of exhaustion, long before the closing stage had set in. + </p> + <p> + I shall subsequently have occasion to trace this nervous impressibility + through various aspects and relations of his life; all I now seek to show + is that this healthiest of poets and most real of men was not compounded + of elements of pure health, and perhaps never could have been so. It might + sound grotesque to say that only a delicate woman could have been the + mother of Robert Browning. The fact remains that of such a one, and no + other, he was born; and we may imagine, without being fanciful, that his + father's placid intellectual powers required for their transmutation into + poetic genius just this infusion of a vital element not only charged with + other racial and individual qualities, but physically and morally more + nearly allied to pain. Perhaps, even for his happiness as a man, we could + not have wished it otherwise. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 3 + </h2> + <h3> + 1812-1826 + </h3> + <p> + Birth of Robert Browning—His Childhood and Schooldays—Restless + Temperament—Brilliant Mental Endowments—Incidental + Peculiarities—Strong Religious Feeling—Passionate Attachment + to his Mother; Grief at first Separation—Fondness for Animals—Experiences + of School Life—Extensive Reading—Early Attempts in Verse—Letter + from his Father concerning them—Spurious Poems in Circulation—'Incondita'—Mr. + Fox—Miss Flower. + </p> + <p> + Robert Browning was born, as has been often repeated, at Camberwell, on + May 7, 1812, soon after a great comet had disappeared from the sky. He was + a handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed an unresting + activity and a fiery temper. He clamoured for occupation from the moment + he could speak. His mother could only keep him quiet when once he had + emerged from infancy by telling him stories—doubtless Bible stories—while + holding him on her knee. His energies were of course destructive till they + had found their proper outlet; but we do not hear of his ever having + destroyed anything for the mere sake of doing so. His first recorded piece + of mischief was putting a handsome Brussels lace veil of his mother's into + the fire; but the motive, which he was just old enough to lisp out, was + also his excuse: 'A pitty baze [pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon + came to his rescue. It has often been told how he extemporized verse aloud + while walking round and round the dining-room table supporting himself by + his hands, when he was still so small that his head was scarcely above it. + He remembered having entertained his mother in the very first walk he was + considered old enough to take with her, by a fantastic account of his + possessions in houses, &c., of which the topographical details + elicited from her the remark, 'Why, sir, you are quite a geographer.' And + though this kind of romancing is common enough among intelligent children, + it distinguishes itself in this case by the strong impression which the + incident had left on his own mind. It seems to have been a first real + flight of dramatic fancy, confusing his identity for the time being. + </p> + <p> + The power of inventing did not, however, interfere with his readiness to + learn, and the facility with which he acquired whatever knowledge came in + his way had, on one occasion, inconvenient results. A lady of reduced + fortunes kept a small elementary school for boys, a stone's-throw from his + home; and he was sent to it as a day boarder at so tender an age that his + parents, it is supposed, had no object in view but to get rid of his + turbulent activity for an hour or two every morning and afternoon. + Nevertheless, his proficiency in reading and spelling was soon so much + ahead of that of the biggest boy, that complaints broke out among the + mammas, who were sure there was not fair play. Mrs.——was + neglecting her other pupils for the sake of 'bringing on Master Browning;' + and the poor lady found it necessary to discourage Master Browning's + attendance lest she should lose the remainder of her flock. This, at + least, was the story as he himself remembered it. According to Miss + Browning his instructress did not yield without a parting shot. She + retorted on the discontented parents that, if she could give their + children 'Master Browning's intellect', she would have no difficulty in + satisfying them. After this came the interlude of home-teaching, in which + all his elementary knowledge must have been gained. As an older child he + was placed with two Misses Ready, who prepared boys for entering their + brother's (the Rev. Thomas Ready's) school; and in due time he passed into + the latter, where he remained up to the age of fourteen. + </p> + <p> + He seems in those early days to have had few playmates beyond his sister, + two years younger than himself, and whom his irrepressible spirit must + sometimes have frightened or repelled. Nor do we hear anything of childish + loves; and though an entry appeared in his diary one Sunday in about the + seventh or eighth year of his age, 'married two wives this morning,' it + only referred to a vague imaginary appropriation of two girls whom he had + just seen in church, and whose charm probably lay in their being much + bigger than he. He was, however, capable of a self-conscious shyness in + the presence of even a little girl; and his sense of certain proprieties + was extraordinarily keen. He told a friend that on one occasion, when the + merest child, he had edged his way by the wall from one point of his + bedroom to another, because he was not fully clothed, and his reflection + in the glass could otherwise have been seen through the partly open door.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Another anecdote, of a very different kind, belongs to an + earlier period, and to that category of pure naughtiness + which could not fail to be sometimes represented in the + conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his + mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy', + had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the + contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes + apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a + certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a + baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name + denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy + resented Aunt Betsy's manner as an affront; and he + determined, after probably repeated provocation, to show her + something worse than a 'lover', whatever this might be. So + one night he slipped out of bed, exchanged his nightgown for + what he considered the appropriate undress of a devil, + completed this by a paper tail, and the ugliest face he + could make, and rushed into the drawing-room, where the old + lady and his mother were drinking tea. He was snatched up + and carried away before he had had time to judge the effect + of his apparition; but he did not think, looking back upon + the circumstances in later life, that Aunt Betsy had + deserved quite so ill of her fellow-creatures as he then + believed. +</pre> + <p> + His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion. The early + Biblical training had had its effect, and he was, to use his own words, + 'passionately religious' in those nursery years; but during them and many + succeeding ones, his mother filled his heart. He loved her so much, he has + been heard to say, that even as a grown man he could not sit by her + otherwise than with an arm round her waist. It is difficult to measure the + influence which this feeling may have exercised on his later life; it led, + even now, to a strange and touching little incident which had in it the + incipient poet no less than the loving child. His attendance at Miss + Ready's school only kept him from home from Monday till Saturday of every + week; but when called upon to confront his first five days of banishment + he felt sure that he would not survive them. A leaden cistern belonging to + the school had in, or outside it, the raised image of a face. He chose the + cistern for his place of burial, and converted the face into his epitaph + by passing his hand over and over it to a continuous chant of: 'In memory + of unhappy Browning'—the ceremony being renewed in his spare + moments, till the acute stage of the feeling had passed away. + </p> + <p> + The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted, was + conspicuous in his very earliest days. His urgent demand for 'something to + do' would constantly include 'something to be caught' for him: 'they were + to catch him an eft;' 'they were to catch him a frog.' He would refuse to + take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among + the strawberries; and the maternal parasol, hovering above the strawberry + bed during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing + picture in his remembrance. But the love of the uncommon was already + asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection + of rare creatures, the first contribution to which was a couple of + lady-birds, picked up one winter's day on a wall and immediately consigned + to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled, 'Animals found surviving in + the depths of a severe winter.' Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the + power of sympathy. His passion for birds and beasts was the counterpart of + his father's love of children, only displaying itself before the age at + which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read Croxall's + Fables to his little sister and him. The story contained in them of a lion + who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he could + no longer endure the sight of the book; and as he dared not destroy it, he + buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room + chair, where it stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When + first he heard the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his + cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger + and cold, he—and his sister with him—cried so bitterly that it + was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the + parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live + peacefully in it ever after. + </p> + <p> + As a boy, he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and + even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home the more portable + creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother for + immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful + tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed and + sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great + intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his + works is readily explained by these facts. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in the + neighbourhood; and both there and under the preparatory training of that + gentleman's sisters, the young Robert was well and kindly cared for. The + Misses Ready especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfare of + their pupils. The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by the + singing, and fell naturally into the measure, of Watts's hymns; and Mr. + Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs by illustrating + with voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis with which the brush would + swoop down in the accentuated syllables of the following lines: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand + In gardens planted by Thy hand. + + . . . . . + + Fools never raise their thoughts so high, + Like 'brutes' they live, like <i>brutes</i> they die. +</pre> + <p> + He even compelled his mother to laugh at it, though it was sorely against + her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing of piously intended things.* + He had become a bigger boy since the episode of the cistern, and had + probably in some degree outgrown the intense piety of his earlier + childhood. This little incident seems to prove it. On the whole, however, + his religious instincts did not need strengthening, though his sense of + humour might get the better of them for a moment; and of secular + instruction he seems to have received as little from the one set of + teachers as from the other. I do not suppose that the mental training at + Mr. Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical than that of most other + schools of his own or, indeed, of a much later period; but the brilliant + abilities of Robert Browning inspired him with a certain contempt for it, + as also for the average schoolboy intelligence to which it was apparently + adapted. It must be for this reason that, as he himself declared, he never + gained a prize, although these rewards were showered in such profusion + that the only difficulty was to avoid them; and if he did not make friends + at school (for this also has been somewhere observed),** it can only be + explained in the same way. He was at an intolerant age, and if his + schoolfellows struck him as more backward or more stupid than they need + be, he is not likely to have taken pains to conceal the impression. It is + difficult, at all events, to think of him as unsociable, and his talents + certainly had their amusing side. Miss Browning tells me that he made his + schoolfellows act plays, some of which he had written for them; and he + delighted his friends, not long ago, by mimicking his own solemn + appearance on some breaking-up or commemorative day, when, according to + programme, 'Master Browning' ascended a platform in the presence of + assembled parents and friends, and, in best jacket, white gloves, and + carefully curled hair, with a circular bow to the company and the then + prescribed waving of alternate arms, delivered a high-flown rhymed address + of his own composition. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always + recognized great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in + Dr. Watts himself, who had devoted to this comparatively + humble work intellectual powers competent to far higher + things. + + ** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards + Sir William, Channel was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning + went to him; but a friendly acquaintance began, and was + afterwards continued, between the two boys; and a closer + friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank, was only + interrupted by his death. Another school friend or + acquaintance recalled himself as such to the poet's memory + some ten or twelve years ago. A man who has reached the age + at which his boyhood becomes of interest to the world may + even have survived many such relations. +</pre> + <p> + And during the busy idleness of his schooldays, or, at all events, in the + holidays in which he rested from it, he was learning, as perhaps only + those do learn whose real education is derived from home. His father's + house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed with books; and, she + adds, 'it was in this way that Robert became very early familiar with + subjects generally unknown to boys.' He read omnivorously, though + certainly not without guidance. One of the books he best and earliest + loved was 'Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed in a seventeenth + century edition, and which contains one or two very tentative specimens of + his early handwriting. Its quaint, powerful lines and still quainter + illustrations combined the marvellous with what he believed to be true; + and he seemed specially identified with its world of religious fancies by + the fact that the soul in it was always depicted as a child. On its more + general grounds his reading was at once largely literary and very + historical; and it was in this direction that the paternal influence was + most strongly revealed. 'Quarles' Emblemes' was only one of the large + collection of old books which Mr. Browning possessed; and the young Robert + learnt to know each favourite author in the dress as well as the language + which carried with it the life of his period. The first edition of + 'Robinson Crusoe'; the first edition of Milton's works, bought for him by + his father; a treatise on astrology published twenty years after the + introduction of printing; the original pamphlet 'Killing no Murder' + (1559), which Carlyle borrowed for his 'Life of Cromwell'; an equally + early copy of Bernard Mandeville's 'Bees'; very ancient Bibles—are + some of the instances which occur to me. Among more modern publications, + 'Walpole's Letters' were familiar to him in boyhood, as well as the + 'Letters of Junius' and all the works of Voltaire. + </p> + <p> + Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part in the mental + culture superintended by Robert Browning's father: we can indeed imagine + no case in which they would not have found their way into the boy's life. + Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him in their due time, though his + special delight in the Greek language only developed itself later. But his + loving, lifelong familiarity with the Elizabethan school, and indeed with + the whole range of English poetry, seems to point to a more constant study + of our national literature. Byron was his chief master in those early + poetic days. He never ceased to honour him as the one poet who combined a + constructive imagination with the more technical qualities of his art; and + the result of this period of aesthetic training was a volume of short + poems produced, we are told, when he was only twelve, in which the Byronic + influence was predominant. + </p> + <p> + The young author gave his work the title of 'Incondita', which conveyed a + certain idea of deprecation. He was, nevertheless, very anxious to see it + in print; and his father and mother, poetry-lovers of the old school, also + found in it sufficient merit to justify its publication. No publisher, + however, could be found; and we can easily believe that he soon afterwards + destroyed the little manuscript, in some mingled reaction of + disappointment and disgust. But his mother, meanwhile, had shown it to an + acquaintance of hers, Miss Flower, who herself admired its contents so + much as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her friend, the + well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was transmitted to + Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox; and + this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at his urgent request, + that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse contained in a letter + from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much later that a friend, who had + earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitely heard of its destruction. + The fragment, which doubtless shared the same fate, was, I am told, a + direct imitation of Coleridge's 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter'. + </p> + <p> + These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible to + believe them such when we remember that he composed verses long before he + could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact has recently + appeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning have found their way into + the market, and have been bought respectively by Mr. Dykes Campbell and + Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them. It was addressed to + Mr. Thomas Powell: + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. They + were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly a hundred of + them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, having a great + aversion to the practice of many biographers in recording every trifling + incident that falls in their way. He has not the slightest suspicion that + any of his very juvenile performances are in existence. I have several of + the originals by me. They are all extemporaneous productions, nor has any + one a single alteration. There was one amongst them 'On Bonaparte'—remarkably + beautiful—and had I not seen it in his own handwriting I never would + have believed it to have been the production of a child. It is destroyed. + Pardon my troubling you with these specimens, and requesting you never to + mention it, as Robert would be very much hurt. I remain, dear sir, Your + obedient servant, R. Browning. Bank: March 11, 1843. + </p> + <p> + The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been sold and + resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which the + writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father's own + impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together with the + occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from the first, + have been accidental. + </p> + <p> + We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's + genius without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can + have been little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem + to have lain in the direction of too great splendour of language and too + little wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read 'Incondita' and been + struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning that he had + feared these tendencies as his future snare. But the imitative first note + of a young poet's voice may hold a rapture of inspiration which his most + original later utterances will never convey. It is the child Sordello, + singing against the lark. + </p> + <p> + Not even the poet's sister ever saw 'Incondita'. It was the only one of + his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read, or even help + him to write out. She was then too young to be taken into his confidence. + Its writing, however, had one important result. It procured for the + boy-poet a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary patron and + friend Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the first + substantial record of an acquaintance which made a considerable impression + on his personal life. + </p> + <p> + The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters, + both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place in + the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie, was + a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams, a + writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known + 'Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.* They + sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment, + their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were, in their + different ways, very attractive; both interesting, not only from their + talents, but from their attachment to each other, and the delicacy which + shortened their lives. They died of consumption, the elder in 1846, at the + age of forty-three; the younger a year later. They became acquainted with + Mrs. Browning through a common friend, Miss Sturtevant; and the young + Robert conceived a warm admiration for Miss Flower's talents, and a boyish + love for herself. She was nine years his senior; her own affections became + probably engaged, and, as time advanced, his feeling seems to have + subsided into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We hear, indeed, of + his falling in love, as he was emerging from his teens, with a handsome + girl who was on a visit at his father's house. But the fancy died out 'for + want of root.' The admiration, even tenderness, for Miss Flower had so + deep a 'root' that he never in latest life mentioned her name with + indifference. In a letter to Mr. Dykes Campbell, in 1881, he spoke of her + as 'a very remarkable person.' If, in spite of his denials, any woman + inspired 'Pauline', it can have been no other than she. He began writing + to her at twelve or thirteen, probably on the occasion of her expressed + sympathy with his first distinct effort at authorship; and what he + afterwards called 'the few utterly insignificant scraps of letters and + verse' which formed his part of the correspondence were preserved by her + as long as she lived. But he recovered and destroyed them after his return + to England, with all the other reminiscences of those early years. Some + notes, however, are extant, dated respectively, 1841, 1842, and 1845, and + will be given in their due place. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * She also wrote a dramatic poem in five acts, entitled + 'Vivia Perpetua', referred to by Mrs. Jameson in her 'Sacred + and Legendary Art', and by Leigh Hunt, when he spoke of her + in 'Blue-Stocking Revels', as 'Mrs. Adams, rare mistress of + thought and of tears.' +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Fox was a friend of Miss Flower's father (Benjamin Flower, known as + editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer'), and, at his death, in 1829, + became co-executor to his will, and a kind of guardian to his daughters, + then both unmarried, and motherless from their infancy. Eliza's principal + work was a collection of hymns and anthems, originally composed for Mr. + Fox's chapel, where she had assumed the entire management of the choral + part of the service. Her abilities were not confined to music; she + possessed, I am told, an instinctive taste and judgment in literary + matters which caused her opinion to be much valued by literary men. But + Mr. Browning's genuine appreciation of her musical genius was probably the + strongest permanent bond between them. We shall hear of this in his own + words. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 4 + </h2> + <h3> + 1826-1833 + </h3> + <p> + First Impressions of Keats and Shelley—Prolonged Influence of + Shelley—Details of Home Education—Its Effects—Youthful + Restlessness—Counteracting Love of Home—Early Friendships: + Alfred Domett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes—Choice of Poetry as + a Profession—Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning + them—Interest in Art—Love of good Theatrical Performances—Talent + for Acting—Final Preparation for Literary Life. + </p> + <p> + At the period at which we have arrived, which is that of his leaving + school and completing his fourteenth year, another and a significant + influence was dawning on Robert Browning's life—the influence of the + poet Shelley. Mr. Sharp writes,* and I could only state the facts in + similar words, 'Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of + second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's + Atheistical Poem: very scarce."' . . . 'From vague remarks in reply to his + inquiries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned that there + really was a poet called Shelley; that he had written several volumes; + that he was dead.' . . . 'He begged his mother to procure him Shelley's + works, a request not easily complied with, for the excellent reason that + not one of the local booksellers had even heard of the poet's name. + Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what she sought was + procurable at the Olliers', in Vere Street, London.' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * 'Life of Browning', pp. 30, 31. +</pre> + <p> + Mrs. Browning went to Messrs. Ollier, and brought back 'most of Shelley's + writings, all in their first edition, with the exception of "The Cenci".' + She brought also three volumes of the still less known John Keats, on + being assured that one who liked Shelley's works would like these also. + </p> + <p> + Keats and Shelley must always remain connected in this epoch of Mr. + Browning's poetic growth. They indeed came to him as the two nightingales + which, he told some friends, sang together in the May-night which closed + this eventful day: one in the laburnum in his father's garden, the other + in a copper beech which stood on adjoining ground—with the + difference indeed, that he must often have listened to the feathered + singers before, while the two new human voices sounded from what were to + him, as to so many later hearers, unknown heights and depths of the + imaginative world. Their utterance was, to such a spirit as his, the last, + as in a certain sense the first, word of what poetry can say; and no one + who has ever heard him read the 'Ode to a Nightingale', and repeat in the + same subdued tones, as if continuing his own thoughts, some line from + 'Epipsychidion', can doubt that they retained a lasting and almost equal + place in his poet's heart. But the two cannot be regarded as equals in + their relation to his life, and it would be a great mistake to impute to + either any important influence upon his genius. We may catch some fleeting + echoes of Keats's melody in 'Pippa Passes'; it is almost a commonplace + that some measure of Shelleyan fancy is recognizable in 'Pauline'. But the + poetic individuality of Robert Browning was stronger than any circumstance + through which it could be fed. It would have found nourishment in desert + air. With his first accepted work he threw off what was foreign to his + poetic nature, to be thenceforward his own never-to-be-subdued and + never-to-be-mistaken self. If Shelley became, and long remained for him, + the greatest poet of his age—of almost any age—it was not + because he held him greatest in the poetic art, but because in his case, + beyond all others, he believed its exercise to have been prompted by the + truest spiritual inspiration. + </p> + <p> + It is difficult to trace the process by which this conviction formed + itself in the boy's mind; still more to account for the strong personal + tenderness which accompanied it. The facts can have been scarcely known + which were to present Shelley to his imagination as a maligned and + persecuted man. It is hard to judge how far such human qualities as we now + read into his work, could be apparent to one who only approached him + through it. But the extra-human note in Shelley's genius irresistibly + suggested to the Browning of fourteen, as it still did to the Browning of + forty, the presence of a lofty spirit, one dwelling in the communion of + higher things. There was often a deep sadness in his utterance; the + consecration of an early death was upon him. And so the worship rooted + itself and grew. It was to find its lyrical expression in 'Pauline'; its + rational and, from the writer's point of view, philosophic justification + in the prose essay on Shelley, published eighteen years afterwards. + </p> + <p> + It may appear inconsistent with the nature of this influence that it began + by appealing to him in a subversive form. The Shelley whom Browning first + loved was the Shelley of 'Queen Mab', the Shelley who would have + remodelled the whole system of religious belief, as of human duty and + rights; and the earliest result of the new development was that he became + a professing atheist, and, for two years, a practising vegetarian. He + returned to his natural diet when he found his eyesight becoming weak. The + atheism cured itself; we do not exactly know when or how. What we do know + is, that it was with him a passing state of moral or imaginative + rebellion, and not one of rational doubt. His mind was not so constituted + that such doubt could fasten itself upon it; nor did he ever in after-life + speak of this period of negation except as an access of boyish folly, with + which his maturer self could have no concern. The return to religious + belief did not shake his faith in his new prophet. It only made him + willing to admit that he had misread him. + </p> + <p> + This Shelley period of Robert Browning's life—that which intervened + between 'Incondita' and 'Pauline'—remained, nevertheless, one of + rebellion and unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributed + besides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided that he was to + complete, or at all events continue, his education at home; and, knowing + the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt that the best reasons, of + kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding. It was none the less, + probably, a mistake, for the time being. The conditions of home life were + the more favourable for the young poet's imaginative growth; but there can + rarely have been a boy whose moral and mental health had more to gain by + the combined discipline and freedom of a public school. His home training + was made to include everything which in those days went to the production + of an accomplished gentleman, and a great deal therefore that was + physically good. He learned music, singing, dancing, riding, boxing, and + fencing, and excelled in the more active of these pursuits. The study of + music was also serious, and carried on under two masters. Mr. John Relfe, + author of a valuable work on counterpoint, was his instructor in + thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil of Moscheles, in execution. He wrote + music for songs which he himself sang; among them Donne's 'Go and catch a + falling star'; Hood's 'I will not have the mad Clytie'; Peacock's 'The + mountain sheep are sweeter'; and his settings, all of which he + subsequently destroyed, were, I am told, very spirited. His education + seems otherwise to have been purely literary. For two years, from the age + of fourteen to that of sixteen, he studied with a French tutor, who, + whether this was intended or not, imparted to him very little but a good + knowledge of the French language and literature. In his eighteenth year he + attended, for a term or two, a Greek class at the London University. His + classical and other reading was probably continued. But we hear nothing in + the programme of mathematics, or logic—of any, in short, of those + subjects which train, even coerce, the thinking powers, and which were + doubly requisite for a nature in which the creative imagination was + predominant over all the other mental faculties, great as these other + faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from this omission: since + the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his + earlier and again in his latest works, must have been partly due to his + never learning to follow the processes of more normally constituted minds. + It would be a great error to suppose that they ever arose from the absence + of a meaning clearly felt, if not always clearly thought out, by himself. + He was storing his memory and enriching his mind; but precisely in so + doing he was nourishing the consciousness of a very vivid and urgent + personality; and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of a + home-bred youth, it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found in + verse we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then have + written. It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, still more, + the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards poetic + production. It would be a relief to him to sketch out and elaborate the + plan of his future work—his great mental portrait gallery of typical + men and women; and he was doing so during at least the later years which + preceded the birth of 'Pauline'. But even this must have been the result + of some protracted travail with himself; because it was only the inward + sense of very varied possibilities of existence which could have impelled + him towards this kind of creation. No character he ever produced was + merely a figment of the brain. + </p> + <p> + It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he should have + been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other. The + always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness. He behaved as + a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes that he is not + appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms which his cleverness + assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds. He set the judgments of + those about him at defiance, and gratuitously proclaimed himself + everything that he was, and some things that he was not. All this subdued + itself as time advanced, and the coming man in him could throw off the + wayward child. It was all so natural that it might well be forgotten. But + it distressed his mother, the one being in the world whom he entirely + loved; and deserves remembering in the tender sorrow with which he himself + remembered it. He was always ready to say that he had been worth little in + his young days; indeed, his self-depreciation covered the greater part of + his life. This was, perhaps, one reason of the difficulty of inducing him + to dwell upon his past. 'I am better now,' he has said more than once, + when its reminiscences have been invoked. + </p> + <p> + One tender little bond maintained itself between his mother and himself so + long as he lived under the paternal roof; it was his rule never to go to + bed without giving her a good-night kiss. If he was out so late that he + had to admit himself with a latch-key, he nevertheless went to her in her + room. Nor did he submit to this as a necessary restraint; for, except on + the occasions of his going abroad, it is scarcely on record that he ever + willingly spent a night away from home. It may not stand for much, or it + may stand to the credit of his restlessness, that, when he had been placed + with some gentleman in Gower Street, for the convenience of attending the + University lectures, or for the sake of preparing for them, he broke + through the arrangement at the end of a week; but even an agreeable visit + had no power to detain him beyond a few days. + </p> + <p> + This home-loving quality was in curious contrast to the natural + bohemianism of youthful genius, and the inclination to wildness which + asserted itself in his boyish days. It became the more striking as he + entered upon the age at which no reasonable amount of freedom can have + been denied to him. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for the pecuniary + dependence which forbade his forming any expensive habits of amusement; + but he also claims the credit of having been unable to accept any low-life + pleasures in place of them. I do not know how the idea can have arisen + that he willingly sought his experience in the society of 'gipsies and + tramps'. I remember nothing in his works which even suggests such + association; and it is certain that a few hours spent at a fair would at + all times have exhausted his capability of enduring it. In the most + audacious imaginings of his later life, in the most undisciplined acts of + his early youth, were always present curious delicacies and reserves. + There was always latent in him the real goodness of heart which would not + allow him to trifle consciously with other lives. Work must also have been + his safeguard when the habit of it had been acquired, and when + imagination, once his master, had learned to serve him. + </p> + <p> + One tangible cause of his youthful restlessness has been implied in the + foregoing remarks, but deserves stating in his sister's words: 'The fact + was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. They were + absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he + chafed under them.' He was not, however, quite without congenial society + even before the turning-point in his outward existence which was reached + in the publication of 'Pauline'; and one long friendly acquaintance, + together with one lasting friendship, had their roots in these early + Camberwell days. The families of Joseph Arnould and Alfred Domett both + lived at Camberwell. These two young men were bred to the legal + profession, and the former, afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould, became a judge + in Bombay. But the father of Alfred Domett had been one of Nelson's + captains, and the roving sailor spirit was apparent in his son; for he had + scarcely been called to the Bar when he started for New Zealand on the + instance of a cousin who had preceded him, but who was drowned in the + course of a day's surveying before he could arrive. He became a member of + the New Zealand Parliament, and ultimately, for a short time, of its + Cabinet; only returning to England after an absence of thirty years. This + Mr. Domett seems to have been a very modest man, besides a devoted friend + of Robert Browning's, and on occasion a warm defender of his works. When + he read the apostrophe to 'Alfred, dear friend,' in the 'Guardian Angel', + he had reached the last line before it occurred to him that the person + invoked could be he. I do not think that this poem, and that directly + addressed to him under the pseudonym of 'Waring', were the only ones + inspired by the affectionate remembrance which he had left in their + author's mind. + </p> + <p> + Among his boy companions were also the three Silverthornes, his neighbours + at Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side. They appear to have been + wild youths, and had certainly no part in his intellectual or literary + life; but the group is interesting to his biographer. The three brothers + were all gifted musicians; having also, probably, received this endowment + from their mother's father. Mr. Browning conceived a great affection for + the eldest, and on the whole most talented of the cousins; and when he had + died—young, as they all did—he wrote 'May and Death' in + remembrance of him. The name of 'Charles' stands there for the old, + familiar 'Jim', so often uttered by him in half-pitying, and + all-affectionate allusion, in his later years. Mrs. Silverthorne was the + aunt who paid for the printing of 'Pauline'. + </p> + <p> + It was at about the time of his short attendance at University College + that the choice of poetry as his future profession was formally made. It + was a foregone conclusion in the young Robert's mind; and little less in + that of his father, who took too sympathetic an interest in his son's life + not to have seen in what direction his desires were tending. He must, it + is true, at some time or other, have played with the thought of becoming + an artist; but the thought can never have represented a wish. If he had + entertained such a one, it would have met not only with no opposition on + his father's part, but with a very ready assent, nor does the question + ever seem to have been seriously mooted in the family councils. It would + be strange, perhaps, if it had. Mr. Browning became very early familiar + with the names of the great painters, and also learned something about + their work; for the Dulwich Gallery was within a pleasant walk of his + home, and his father constantly took him there. He retained through life a + deep interest in art and artists, and became a very familiar figure in one + or two London studios. Some drawings made by him from the nude, in Italy, + and for which he had prepared himself by assiduous copying of casts and + study of human anatomy, had, I believe, great merit. But painting was one + of the subjects in which he never received instruction, though he + modelled, under the direction of his friend Mr. Story; and a letter of his + own will presently show that, in his youth at least, he never credited + himself with exceptional artistic power. That he might have become an + artist, and perhaps a great one, is difficult to doubt, in the face of his + brilliant general ability and special gifts. The power to do a thing is, + however, distinct from the impulse to do it, and proved so in the present + case. + </p> + <p> + More importance may be given to an idea of his father's that he should + qualify himself for the Bar. It would naturally coincide with the widening + of the social horizon which his University College classes supplied; it + was possibly suggested by the fact that the closest friends he had already + made, and others whom he was perhaps now making, were barristers. But this + also remained an idea. He might have been placed in the Bank of England, + where the virtual offer of an appointment had been made to him through his + father; but the elder Browning spontaneously rejected this, as unworthy of + his son's powers. He had never, he said, liked bank work himself, and + could not, therefore, impose it on him. + </p> + <p> + We have still to notice another, and a more mistaken view of the + possibilities of Mr. Browning's life. It has been recently stated, + doubtless on the authority of some words of his own, that the Church was a + profession to which he once felt himself drawn. But an admission of this + kind could only refer to that period of his childhood when natural + impulse, combined with his mother's teaching and guidance, frequently + caused his fancy and his feelings to assume a religious form. From the + time when he was a free agent he ceased to be even a regular churchgoer, + though religion became more, rather than less, an integral part of his + inner life; and his alleged fondness for a variety of preachers meant + really that he only listened to those who, from personal association or + conspicuous merit, were interesting to him. I have mentioned Canon Melvill + as one of these; the Rev. Thomas Jones was, as will be seen, another. In + Venice he constantly, with his sister, joined the congregation of an + Italian minister of the little Vaudois church there.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Browning's memory recalled a first and last effort at + preaching, inspired by one of his very earliest visits to a + place of worship. He extemporized a surplice or gown, + climbed into an arm-chair by way of pulpit, and held forth + so vehemently that his scarcely more than baby sister was + frightened and began to cry; whereupon he turned to an + imaginary presence, and said, with all the sternness which + the occasion required, 'Pew-opener, remove that child.' +</pre> + <p> + It would be far less surprising if we were told, on sufficient authority, + that he had been disturbed by hankerings for the stage. He was a + passionate admirer of good acting, and would walk from London to Richmond + and back again to see Edmund Kean when he was performing there. We know + how Macready impressed him, though the finer genius of Kean became very + apparent to his retrospective judgment of the two; and it was impossible + to see or hear him, as even an old man, in some momentary personation of + one of Shakespeare's characters, above all of Richard III., and not feel + that a great actor had been lost in him. + </p> + <p> + So few professions were thought open to gentlemen in Robert Browning's + eighteenth year, that his father's acquiescence in that which he had + chosen might seem a matter scarcely less of necessity than of kindness. + But we must seek the kindness not only in this first, almost inevitable, + assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent unfailing + readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus', 'Sordello', + and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at his father's + expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought no return to him. This was + vividly present to Mr. Browning's mind in what Mrs. Kemble so justly + defines as those 'remembering days' which are the natural prelude to the + forgetting ones. He declared, in the course of these, to a friend, that + for it alone he owed more to his father than to anyone else in the world. + Words to this effect, spoken in conversation with his sister, have since, + as it was right they should, found their way into print. The more justly + will the world interpret any incidental admission he may ever have made, + of intellectual disagreement between that father and himself. + </p> + <p> + When the die was cast, and young Browning was definitely to adopt + literature as his profession, he qualified himself for it by reading and + digesting the whole of Johnson's Dictionary. We cannot be surprised to + hear this of one who displayed so great a mastery of words, and so deep a + knowledge of the capacities of the English language. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 5 + </h2> + <h3> + 1833-1835 + </h3> + <p> + 'Pauline'—Letters to Mr. Fox—Publication of the Poem; chief + Biographical and Literary Characteristics—Mr. Fox's Review in the + 'Monthly Repository'; other Notices—Russian Journey—Desired + diplomatic Appointment—Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of + Appearance—'The Trifler'—M. de Ripert-Monclar—'Paracelsus'—Letters + to Mr. Fox concerning it; its Publication—Incidental Origin of + 'Paracelsus'; its inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'—Mr. + Fox's Review of it in the 'Monthly Repository'—Article in the + 'Examiner' by John Forster. + </p> + <p> + Before Mr. Browning had half completed his twenty-first year he had + written 'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession'. His sister was in the + secret, but this time his parents were not. This is why his aunt, hearing + that 'Robert' had 'written a poem,' volunteered the sum requisite for its + publication. Even this first instalment of success did not inspire much + hope in the family mind, and Miss Browning made pencil copies of her + favourite passages for the event, which seemed only too possible, of her + never seeing the whole poem again. It was, however, accepted by Saunders + and Otley, and appeared anonymously in 1833. Meanwhile the young author + had bethought himself of his early sympathizer, Mr. Fox, and he wrote to + him as follows (the letter is undated): + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—Perhaps by the aid of the subjoined initials and a little + reflection, you may recollect an oddish sort of boy, who had the honour of + being introduced to you at Hackney some years back—at that time a + sayer of verse and a doer of it, and whose doings you had a little + previously commended after a fashion—(whether in earnest or not God + knows): that individual it is who takes the liberty of addressing one + whose slight commendation then, was more thought of than all the gun drum + and trumpet of praise would be now, and to submit to you a free and easy + sort of thing which he wrote some months ago 'on one leg' and which comes + out this week—having either heard or dreamed that you contribute to + the 'Westminster'. + </p> + <p> + Should it be found too insignificant for cutting up, I shall no less + remain, Dear sir, Your most obedient servant, R. B. + </p> + <p> + I have forgotten the main thing—which is to beg you not to spoil a + loophole I have kept for backing out of the thing if necessary, 'sympathy + of dear friends,' &c. &c., none of whom know anything about it. + </p> + <p> + Monday Morning; Rev.—Fox. + </p> + <p> + The answer was clearly encouraging, and Mr. Browning wrote again: + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—In consequence of your kind permission I send, or will + send, a dozen copies of 'Pauline' and (to mitigate the infliction) + Shelley's Poem—on account of what you mentioned this morning. It + will perhaps be as well that you let me know their safe arrival by a line + to R. B. junior, Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell. You must + not think me too encroaching, if I make the getting back 'Rosalind and + Helen' an excuse for calling on you some evening—the said 'R. and + H.' has, I observe, been well thumbed and sedulously marked by an + acquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of love. I + am, dear sir, Yours very really, R. Browning. Camberwell: 2 o'clock. + </p> + <p> + At the left-hand corner of the first page of this note is written: 'The + parcel—a "Pauline" parcel—is come. I send one as a witness.' + </p> + <p> + On the inner page is written: + </p> + <p> + 'Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R.—pronounced "heavy"— + </p> + <p> + 'A <i>heavy</i> sermon!—sure the error's great, For not a word Tom + uttered <i>had its weight</i>.' + </p> + <p> + A third letter, also undated, but post-marked March 29, 1833, refers + probably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. A fourth + conveys Mr. Browning's thanks for the notice itself: + </p> + <p> + My dear Sir,—I have just received your letter, which I am desirous + of acknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me;—I + can only offer you my simple thanks—but they are of the sort that + one can give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, I think + you are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel—and it will + have been worth while to have made a fool of myself, only to have obtained + a 'case' which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville at a dead lock. + </p> + <p> + As for the book—I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve your + goodness. + </p> + <p> + In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir, + Your most obliged and obedient servant R. B. S. & O.'s, Conduit St., + Thursday m-g. + </p> + <p> + I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I had + intended—but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect + at all hazards. + </p> + <p> + I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, and not + altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your most generous + 'coming forward'. Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewhere tells us, + mainly to send them to some one in the country who had 'always prophesied + he would be something'!—I shall never write a line without thinking + of the source of my first praise, be assured. I am, dear sir, Yours most + truly and obliged, Robert Browning. March 31, 1833. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the 'Monthly Repository', + which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her graceful article + on Robert Browning, in the 'Argosy' for February 1890, he was endeavouring + to raise from its original denominational character into a first-class + literary and political journal. The articles comprised in the volume for + 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, at once more popular and + more solid than those prescribed by the present fashion of monthly + magazines. He reviewed 'Pauline' favourably in its April number—that + is, as soon as it had appeared; and the young poet thus received from him + an introduction to what should have been, though it probably was not, a + large circle of intelligent readers. + </p> + <p> + The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, in a fantastic + note appended to a copy of it, as 'the only remaining crab of the shapely + Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.' This name is ill bestowed upon a work + which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning's genius, contains, in its + many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, so much that is rich and + sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, its faults of exaggeration and + confusion; and it is of these that Mr. Browning was probably thinking when + he wrote his more serious apologetic preface to its reprint in 1868. But + these faults were partly due to his conception of the character which he + had tried to depict; and partly to the inherent difficulty of depicting + one so complex, in a succession of mental and moral states, irrespectively + of the conditions of time, place, and circumstance which were involved in + them. Only a very powerful imagination could have inspired such an + attempt. A still more conspicuous effort of creative genius reveals itself + at its close. The moment chosen for the 'Confession' has been that of a + supreme moral or physical crisis. The exhaustion attendant on this is + directly expressed by the person who makes it, and may also be recognized + in the vivid, yet confusing, intensity of the reminiscences of which it + consists. But we are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis is + that of approaching death or incipient convalescence, or which character + it bears in the sufferer's mind; and the language used in the closing + pages is such as to suggest, without the slightest break in poetic + continuity, alternately the one conclusion and the other. This was + intended by Browning to assist his anonymity; and when the writer in + 'Tait's Magazine' spoke of the poem as a piece of pure bewilderment, he + expressed the natural judgment of the Philistine, while proving himself + such. If the notice by J. S. Mill, which this criticism excluded, was + indeed—as Mr. Browning always believed—much more sympathetic, + I can only record my astonishment; for there never was a large and + cultivated intelligence one can imagine less in harmony than his with the + poetic excesses, or even the poetic qualities, of 'Pauline'. But this is a + digression. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Fox, though an accomplished critic, made very light of the artistic + blemishes of the work. His admiration for it was as generous as it was + genuine; and, having recognized in it the hand of a rising poet, it was + more congenial to him to hail that poet's advent than to register his + shortcomings. + </p> + <p> + 'The poem,' he says, 'though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, has + truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with + the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of + genius.' + </p> + <p> + But it had also, in his mind, a distinguishing characteristic, which + raised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism. The article + continues: + </p> + <p> + 'We have never read anything more purely confessional. The whole + composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of + thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are transitions + from one state of spiritual existence to another.' + </p> + <p> + And we learn from the context that he accepted this confessional and + introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life—of + the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest admirers + of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its sentiment is + warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense, spiritual; but its + intellectual activities are exercised on entirely temporal ground, and + this fact would generally be admitted as the negation of spirituality in + the religious sense of the word. No difference, however, of opinion as to + his judgment of 'Pauline' can lessen our appreciation of Mr. Fox's + encouraging kindness to its author. No one who loved Mr. Browning in + himself, or in his work, can read the last lines of this review without a + throb of affectionate gratitude for the sympathy so ungrudgingly, and—as + he wrote during his latest years—so opportunely given: + </p> + <p> + 'In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves + about such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for that afterwards, + when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had many + particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown, but he + first gave a glorious leap and shouted 'Eureka!'' + </p> + <p> + Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known to fame. + One only discovered him in his obscurity. + </p> + <p> + Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first + spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; and his admiration was, + in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances which precluded in + it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personal interest or sympathy. + But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our history. + </p> + <p> + I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning's + literary career, because the confidence which it gave him determined its + immediate future, if not its ultimate course—because, also, the poem + itself is more important to the understanding of his mind than perhaps any + other of his isolated works. It was the earliest of his dramatic + creations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct with himself; and + we may regard the 'Confession' as to a great extent his own, without for + an instant ignoring the imaginative element which necessarily and + certainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, his utterance is so + emphatic that we should feel it to be direct, even if we did not know it + to be true. The passage beginning, 'I am made up of an intensest life,' + conveys something more than the writer's actual psychological state. The + feverish desire of life became gradually modified into a more or less + active intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense of an + individual, self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him, + unconditioned existence, survived all the teachings of experience, and + often indeed unconsciously imposed itself upon them. + </p> + <p> + I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment of + distinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation to the + 'Sun-treader'. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, justly declares + that 'the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret mingling with its + exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful.' The + 'exultation' is in the triumph of Shelley's rising fame; the regret, for + the lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness at an obscure + shrine. The double mood would have been characteristic of any period of + Mr. Browning's life. + </p> + <p> + The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural + imagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy instead + of the direct poetic vision of the author's later work. + </p> + <p> + 'Pauline' received another and graceful tribute two months later than the + review. In an article of the 'Monthly Repository', and in the course of a + description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passage occurs: + </p> + <p> + 'Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . They are + natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely as + a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. 'Probatum est.' Last autumn + L——dropped a poem of Shelley's down there in the wood,* + amongst the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a + delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with + 'Pauline' hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but of + pleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, + will follow.' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Browning's copy of 'Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent + to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic. + This and a bald though well-meant notice in the 'Athenaeum' + exhaust its literary history for this period.* + + * Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words, + Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract + from the 'Literary Gazette' of March 23, 1833: + + 'Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession', pp. 71. London, 1833. + Saunders and Otley. + + 'Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual, + and not a little unintelligible,—this is a dreamy volume, + without an object, and unfit for publication.' +</pre> + <p> + The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason why + it should be. But 'Pauline' was, from the first, little known or discussed + beyond the immediate circle of the poet's friends; and when, twenty years + later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it in the library of + the British Museum, he could only surmise that it had been written by the + author of 'Paracelsus'. + </p> + <p> + The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning's visit to + Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russian + consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, and + being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that he + should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. The letters + written to his sister during this, as during every other absence, were + full of graphic description, and would have been a mine of interest for + the student of his imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all + destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences of what they had to + tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed by some of the + circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless monotony of + snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion rushed for + days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without seeming to move + from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate + enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-up of the ice on the + Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony of drinking the first + glass of water from it. He was absent about three months. + </p> + <p> + The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in his + earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired for + his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post of activity and + responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. Soon after his + return from Russia he applied for appointment on a mission which was to be + despatched to Persia; and the careless wording of the answer which his + application received made him think for a moment that it had been granted. + He was much disappointed when he learned, through an interview with the + 'chief', that the place was otherwise filled. + </p> + <p> + In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the 'Monthly + Repository', extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The + earliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. + Browning's works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse's + article in the 'Century Magazine', December 1881; now part of his + 'Personalia'. The second, beginning 'A king lived long ago', was to be + published, with alterations and additions, as one of 'Pippa's' songs. + 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' were reprinted + together in 'Bells and Pomegranates' under the heading of 'Madhouse + Cells'. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning 'Still ailing, Wind? + wilt be appeased or no?' afterwards introduced into the sixth section of + 'James Lee's Wife'. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the + poet's future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most + essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems. + </p> + <p> + This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, of + an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends; + foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred + Domett. The magazine was called the 'Trifler', and published in monthly + numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money on + the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one letter, + February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled 'Some + strictures on a late article in the 'Trifler'.' This boyish production + sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses of some + obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'A Dissertation + on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the + orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing that indebtedness + is a necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry in confusing + it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to + call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; but there + is something so comical in a defence of debt, however transparent, + proceeding from a man to whom never in his life a bill can have been sent + in twice, and who would always have preferred ready-money payment to + receiving a bill at all, that I may be forgiven for quoting some passages + from it. + </p> + <p> + For to be man is to be a debtor:—hinting but slightly at the grand + and primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard + for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with + nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists have + concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an + uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as + represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge most + commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,* and + those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to discharge—or, + as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + He's most in <i>debt</i> who lingers out the day, + Who dies betimes has less and less to pay. +</pre> + <p> + So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c. +</pre> + <p> + as thou pratest, 'tis plain that they have willed on the very outset to + inculcate this truth on the mind of every man,—no barren and + inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive + rule of life,—that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor—aye, + friend, and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander,—no + recreant as thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true—remark, + as did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast 'paid + the <i>debt</i> of nature'? Ha! I have thee 'beyond the rules', as one (a + bailiff) may say! + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my + attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies + is identical with that expressed in these words of + 'Prospice', + + . . . in a minute pay glad life's arrears + Of pain, darkness, and cold. +</pre> + <p> + Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work of + writing 'Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, and which + occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr. + Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the following + letters show that the friend of 'Pauline' gave ready and efficient help in + the strangely difficult task of securing a publisher for the new poem. + </p> + <p> + The first is dated April 2, 1835. + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter:—Sardanapalus + 'could not go on multiplying kingdoms'—nor I protestations—but + I thank you very much. + </p> + <p> + You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. I + merely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name and fame + among author-folk, besides he has himself written—as the Americans + say—'more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at.' So I hope we shall + come to terms. + </p> + <p> + I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind interest, + and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have as yet seen; + indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, for it will never + do for one so distinguished by past praise to prove nobody after all—'nous + verrons'. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged Robt. Browning. + </p> + <p> + On April 16 he wrote again as follows: + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir, + </p> + <p> + Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time in + presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter perused + than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat—the Moxonian + accent grew dolorous thereupon:—'Artevelde' has not paid expenses by + about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is 'popular at Cambridge', and + yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, some 300 only have gone + off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again, &c. + &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c. + </p> + <p> + I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, do really + think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms—I shall + know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine. + </p> + <p> + You will 'sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, you + must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have of your + criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely I am hardly to + blame, who have in more than one instance bored you sufficiently: but not + a particle of your article has been rejected or neglected by your + observant humble servant, and very proud shall I be if my new work bear in + it the marks of the influence under which it was undertaken—and if I + prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace who anticipated an amphora + and produced a porridge-pot. I purposely keep back the subject until you + see my conception of its capabilities—otherwise you would be + planning a vase fit to give the go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my + cantharus would cut but a sorry figure beside—hardly up to the ansa. + </p> + <p> + But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive—and likely I + hope to do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a <i>fresh + eye</i> going over its 4,000 lines—discovering blemishes of all + sorts which my one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, + obscure passages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is,—yet on + the whole I am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to + be allowed to read it some morning to you—for every rap o' the + knuckles I should get a clap o' the back, I know. + </p> + <p> + I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I + conceive, but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two—so I + decide on trying the question with this:—I really shall <i>need</i> + your notice, on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms + akimbo; there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift + and scope are awfully radical—I am 'off' for ever with the other + side, but must by all means be 'on' with yours—a position once + gained, worthier works shall follow—therefore a certain writer* who + meditated a notice (it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on 'Pauline' in + the 'Examiner', must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, but + in no case an idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage (having + previously only dabbled in private theatricals) and bawl 'Hats off!' 'Down + in front!' &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium; and he may depend + that tho' my 'Now is the winter of our discontent' be rather awkward, yet + there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff—that I shall warm + as I get on, and finally wish 'Richmond at the bottom of the seas,' &c. + in the best style imaginable. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. John Stuart Mill. +</pre> + <p> + Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and + </p> + <p> + (The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.) + </p> + <p> + Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we + understand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the author + than on that of its intrinsic worth. + </p> + <p> + The title-page of 'Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmest + friendships of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young + French Royalist, one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri on + her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, spending his summers + in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, really—as he confessed to + the Browning family—in the character of private agent of + communication between the royal exiles and their friends in France. He was + four years older than the poet, and of intellectual tastes which created + an immediate bond of union between them. In the course of one of their + conversations, he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible subject + for a poem; but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, because it + gave no room for the introduction of love: about which, he added, every + young man of their age thought he had something quite new to say. Mr. + Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would write a poem on + Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was dedicated, in + fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its inspiration had been + due. + </p> + <p> + The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends did not + meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, Mr. Browning + heard a voice behind him crying, 'Robert!' He turned, and there was + 'Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married; the Count—then, I + believe, Marquis—to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. Mrs. Browning, + to whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning + became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, and in + 1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, to + both of which learned bodies his friend belonged. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing produced + a character—at all events a history—which, according to recent + judgments, approached far nearer to the reality than any conception which + had until then been formed of it. He had carefully collected all the known + facts of the great discoverer's life, and interpreted them with a sympathy + which was no less an intuition of their truth than a reflection of his own + genius upon them. We are enabled in some measure to judge of this by a + paper entitled 'Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine', written by Dr. + Edward Berdoe for the Browning Society, and read at its October meeting in + 1888; and in the difficulty which exists for most of us of verifying the + historical data of Mr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, as + well as an interesting comment upon it. + </p> + <p> + Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus + without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, + as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in + illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who + was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the poem. The + passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparently another term + for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of all mediaeval occultism, + as of all modern theosophy—of a soul-power equally operative in the + material and the immaterial, in nature and in the consciousness of man. + </p> + <p> + The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparently + conflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience, of + the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit, among the things of + Nature, of an ultimate of knowledge, not contained, even in fragments, in + her isolated truths; the sense of failure which haunts his most valuable + attainments; his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic, when the + divine has failed; the ascetic exaltation in which he begins his career; + the sudden awakening to the spiritual sterility which has been consequent + on it; all these find their place, if not always their counterpart, in the + real life. + </p> + <p> + The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards himself + and the world, are not, however, quite consonant with the alleged facts. + They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer of the world of abstract + thought than to a mystical scientist pursuing the secret of existence. He + preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes, a loftiness of tone and a unity + of intention, difficult to connect, even in fancy, with the real man, in + whom the inherited superstitions and the prognostics of true science must + often have clashed with each other. Dr. Berdoe's picture of the 'Reformer' + drawn more directly from history, conveys this double impression. Mr. + Browning has rendered him more simple by, as it were, recasting him in the + atmosphere of a more modern time, and of his own intellectual life. This + poem still, therefore, belongs to the same group as 'Pauline', though, as + an effort of dramatic creation, superior to it. + </p> + <p> + We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise in the deathbed + revelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story. It supplies a + fitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus, than to those of + the historical, whether or not its utterance was within the compass of + historical probability, as Dr. Berdoe believes. In any case it was the + direct product of Mr. Browning's mind, and expressed what was to be his + permanent conviction. It might then have been an echo of German + pantheistic philosophies. From the point of view of science—of + modern science at least—it was prophetic; although the prophecy of + one for whom evolution could never mean less or more than a divine + creation operating on this progressive plan. + </p> + <p> + The more striking, perhaps, for its personal quality are the evidences of + imaginative sympathy, even direct human insight, in which the poem + abounds. Festus is, indeed, an essentially human creature: the man—it + might have been the woman—of unambitious intellect and large + intelligence of the heart, in whom so many among us have found comfort and + help. We often feel, in reading 'Pauline', that the poet in it was older + than the man. The impression is more strongly and more definitely conveyed + by this second work, which has none of the intellectual crudeness of + 'Pauline', though it still belongs to an early phase of the author's + intellectual life. Not only its mental, but its moral maturity, seems so + much in advance of his uncompleted twenty-third year. + </p> + <p> + To the first edition of 'Paracelsus' was affixed a preface, now long + discarded, but which acquires fresh interest in a retrospect of the + author's completed work; for it lays down the constant principle of + dramatic creation by which that work was to be inspired. It also + anticipates probable criticism of the artistic form which on this, and so + many subsequent occasions, he selected for it. + </p> + <p> + 'I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset—mistaking + my performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in common—judge + it by principles on which it was never moulded, and subject it to a + standard to which it was never meant to conform. I therefore anticipate + his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably more novel than happy, to + reverse the method usually adopted by writers whose aim it is to set forth + any phenomenon of the mind or the passions, by the operation of persons + and events; and that, instead of having recourse to an external machinery + of incidents to create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have + ventured to display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and + progress, and have suffered the agency by which it is influenced and + determined, to be generally discernible in its effects alone, and + subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded: and this for a reason. + I have endeavoured to write a poem, not a drama: the canons of the drama + are well known, and I cannot but think that, inasmuch as they have + immediate regard to stage representation, the peculiar advantages they + hold out are really such only so long as the purpose for which they were + at first instituted is kept in view. I do not very well understand what is + called a Dramatic Poem, wherein all those restrictions only submitted to + on account of compensating good in the original scheme are scrupulously + retained, as though for some special fitness in themselves—and all + new facilities placed at an author's disposal by the vehicle he selects, + as pertinaciously rejected. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Fox reviewed this also in the 'Monthly Repository'. The article might + be obtained through the kindness of Mrs. Bridell-Fox; but it will be + sufficient for my purpose to refer to its closing paragraph, as given by + her in the 'Argosy' of February 1890. It was a final expression of what + the writer regarded as the fitting intellectual attitude towards a rising + poet, whose aims and methods lay so far beyond the range of the + conventional rules of poetry. The great event in the history of + 'Paracelsus' was John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner'. Mr. + Forster had recently come to town. He could barely have heard Mr. + Browning's name, and, as he afterwards told him, was perplexed in reading + the poem by the question of whether its author was an old or a young man; + but he knew that a writer in the 'Athenaeum' had called it rubbish, and he + had taken it up as a probable subject for a piece of slashing criticism. + What he did write can scarcely be defined as praise. It was the simple, + ungrudging admission of the unequivocal power, as well as brilliant + promise, which he recognized in the work. This mutual experience was the + introduction to a long and, certainly on Mr. Browning's part, a sincere + friendship. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 6 + </h2> + <h3> + 1835-1838 + </h3> + <p> + Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars—Renewed Intercourse with the + second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather—Reuben Browning—William + Shergold Browning—Visitors at Hatcham—Thomas Carlyle—Social + Life—New Friends and Acquaintance—Introduction to Macready—New + Year's Eve at Elm Place—Introduction to John Forster—Miss + Fanny Haworth—Miss Martineau—Serjeant Talfourd—The 'Ion' + Supper—'Strafford'—Relations with Macready—Performance + of 'Strafford'—Letters concerning it from Mr. Browning and Miss + Flower—Personal Glimpses of Robert Browning—Rival Forms of + Dramatic Inspiration—Relation of 'Strafford' to 'Sordello'—Mr. + Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'. + </p> + <p> + It was soon after this time, though the exact date cannot be recalled, + that the Browning family moved from Camberwell to Hatcham. Some such + change had long been in contemplation, for their house was now too small; + and the finding one more suitable, in the latter place, had decided the + question. The new home possessed great attractions. The long, low rooms of + its upper storey supplied abundant accommodation for the elder Mr. + Browning's six thousand books. Mrs. Browning was suffering greatly from + her chronic ailment, neuralgia; and the large garden, opening on to the + Surrey hills, promised her all the benefits of country air. There were a + coach-house and stable, which, by a curious, probably old-fashioned, + arrangement, formed part of the house, and were accessible from it. Here + the 'good horse', York, was eventually put up; and near this, in the + garden, the poet soon had another though humbler friend in the person of a + toad, which became so much attached to him that it would follow him as he + walked. He visited it daily, where it burrowed under a white rose tree, + announcing himself by a pinch of gravel dropped into its hole; and the + creature would crawl forth, allow its head to be gently tickled, and + reward the act with that loving glance of the soft full eyes which Mr. + Browning has recalled in one of the poems of 'Asolando'. + </p> + <p> + This change of residence brought the grandfather's second family, for the + first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. Mr. + Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms with his + stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for this + forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves and + two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart for + frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and, in order to + be near her relations, she also came to Hatcham, and established herself + there in close neighbourhood to them. She had then with her only a son and + a daughter, those known to the poet's friends as Uncle Reuben and Aunt + Jemima; respectively nine years, and one year, older than he. 'Aunt + Jemima' married not long afterwards, and is chiefly remembered as having + been very amiable, and, in early youth, to use her nephew's words, 'as + beautiful as the day;' but kindly, merry 'Uncle Reuben', then clerk in the + Rothschilds' London bank,* became a conspicuous member of the family + circle. This does not mean that the poet was ever indebted to him for + pecuniary help; and it is desirable that this should be understood, since + it has been confidently asserted that he was so. So long as he was + dependent at all, he depended exclusively on his father. Even the use of + his uncle's horse, which might have been accepted as a friendly concession + on Mr. Reuben's part, did not really represent one. The animal stood, as I + have said, in Mr. Browning's stable, and it was groomed by his gardener. + The promise of these conveniences had induced Reuben Browning to buy a + horse instead of continuing to hire one. He could only ride it on a few + days of the week, and it was rather a gain than a loss to him that so good + a horseman as his nephew should exercise it during the interval. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * This uncle's name, and his business relations with the + great Jewish firm, have contributed to the mistaken theory + of the poet's descent. +</pre> + <p> + Uncle Reuben was not a great appreciator of poetry—at all events of + his nephew's; and an irreverent remark on 'Sordello', imputed to a more + eminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, from him. + But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that he was a good + linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. He was also, + apparently, an accomplished classic. Lord Beaconsfield is said to have + declared that the inscription on a silver inkstand, presented to the + daughter of Lionel Rothschild on her marriage, by the clerks at New Court, + 'was the most appropriate thing he had ever come across;' and that whoever + had selected it must be one of the first Latin scholars of the day. It was + Mr. Reuben Browning. + </p> + <p> + Another favourite uncle was William Shergold Browning, though less + intimate with his nephew and niece than he would have become if he had not + married while they were still children, and settled in Paris, where his + father's interest had placed him in the Rothschild house. He is known by + his 'History of the Huguenots', a work, we are told, 'full of research, + with a reference to contemporary literature for almost every occurrence + mentioned or referred to.' He also wrote the 'Provost of Paris', and 'Hoel + Morven', historical novels, and 'Leisure Hours', a collection of + miscellanies; and was a contributor for some years to the 'Gentleman's + Magazine'. It was chiefly from this uncle that Miss Browning and her + brother heard the now often-repeated stories of their probable ancestors, + Micaiah Browning, who distinguished himself at the siege of Derry, and + that commander of the ship 'Holy Ghost' who conveyed Henry V. to France + before the battle of Agincourt, and received the coat-of-arms, with its + emblematic waves, in reward for his service. Robert Browning was also + indebted to him for the acquaintance of M. de Ripert-Monclar; for he was + on friendly terms with the uncle of the young count, the Marquis de + Fortia, a learned man and member of the Institut, and gave a letter of + introduction—actually, I believe, to his brother Reuben—at the + Marquis's request.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning, + graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, and is + now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name + first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son, + while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment, + connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate + with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much. +</pre> + <p> + The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in his high estimate + of the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. On one occasion he took his + brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. An earlier and much attached + friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, cousin to the noted physician + Dr. Blundell. He enabled the young Robert, whom he knew from the age of + sixteen, to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and this aroused in + him a considerable interest in the sciences connected with medicine, + though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge of either disease + or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into his life. A Captain + Lloyd is indirectly associated with 'The Flight of the Duchess'. That poem + was not completed according to its original plan; and it was the always + welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentleman which arrested its + completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered how the click of the garden + gate, and the sight of the familiar figure advancing towards the house, + had broken in upon his work and dispelled its first inspiration. + </p> + <p> + The appearance of 'Paracelsus' did not give the young poet his just place + in popular judgment and public esteem. A generation was to pass before + this was conceded to him. But it compelled his recognition by the leading + or rising literary men of the day; and a fuller and more varied social + life now opened before him. The names of Serjeant Talfourd, Horne, Leigh + Hunt, Barry Cornwall (Procter), Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Eliot + Warburton, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Walter Savage Landor, represent, with + that of Forster, some of the acquaintances made, or the friendships begun, + at this period. Prominent among the friends that were to be, was also + Archer Gurney, well known in later life as the Rev. Archer Gurney, and + chaplain to the British embassy in Paris. His sympathies were at present + largely absorbed by politics. He was contesting the representation of some + county, on the Conservative side; but he took a very vivid interest in Mr. + Browning's poems; and this perhaps fixes the beginning of the intimacy at + a somewhat later date; since a pretty story by which it was illustrated + connects itself with the publication of 'Bells and Pomegranates'. He + himself wrote dramas and poems. Sir John, afterwards Lord, Hanmer was also + much attracted by the young poet, who spent a pleasant week with him at + Bettisfield Park. He was the author of a volume entitled 'Fra Cipollo and + other Poems', from which the motto of 'Colombe's Birthday' was + subsequently taken. + </p> + <p> + The friends, old and new, met in the informal manner of those days, at + afternoon dinners, or later suppers, at the houses of Mr. Fox, Serjeant + Talfourd, and, as we shall see, Mr. Macready; and Mr. Fox's daughter, then + only a little girl, but intelligent and observant for her years, well + remembers the pleasant gatherings at which she was allowed to assist, when + first performances of plays, or first readings of plays and poems, had + brought some of the younger and more ardent spirits together. Miss Flower, + also, takes her place in the literary group. Her sister had married in + 1834, and left her free to live for her own pursuits and her own friends; + and Mr. Browning must have seen more of her then than was possible in his + boyish days. + </p> + <p> + None, however, of these intimacies were, at the time, so important to him + as that formed with the great actor Macready. They were introduced to each + other by Mr. Fox early in the winter of 1835-6; the meeting is thus + chronicled in Macready's diary, November 27.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * 'Macready's Reminiscences', edited by Sir Frederick Pollock; + 1875. +</pre> + <p> + 'Went from chambers to dine with Rev. William Fox, Bayswater. . . . Mr. + Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus', came in after dinner; I was + very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence. . . . I + took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve my + acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the + proposal, wished to send me his book; we exchanged cards and parted.' + </p> + <p> + On December 7 he writes: + </p> + <p> + 'Read 'Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry of + thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer can + scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. . . .' + </p> + <p> + He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, for the + last evening of the year; and again refers to him under date of December + 31. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning, + and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; his + simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions from + all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man I + ever saw.' + </p> + <p> + This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together for the + first time. The journey to Elstree was then performed by coach, and the + two young men met at the 'Blue Posts', where, with one or more of Mr. + Macready's other guests, they waited for the coach to start. They eyed + each other with interest, both being striking in their way, and neither + knowing who the other was. When the introduction took place at Macready's + house, Mr. Forster supplemented it by saying: 'Did you see a little notice + of you I wrote in the 'Examiner'?' The two names will now be constantly + associated in Macready's diary, which, except for Mr. Browning's own + casual utterances, is almost our only record of his literary and social + life during the next two years. + </p> + <p> + It was at Elm Place that Mr. Browning first met Miss Euphrasia Fanny + Haworth, then a neighbour of Mr. Macready, residing with her mother at + Barham Lodge. Miss Haworth was still a young woman, but her love and + talent for art and literature made her a fitting member of the genial + circle to which Mr. Browning belonged; and she and the poet soon became + fast friends. Her first name appears as 'Eyebright' in 'Sordello'. His + letters to her, returned after her death by her brother, Mr. Frederick + Haworth, supply valuable records of his experiences and of his feelings at + one very interesting, and one deeply sorrowful, period of his history. She + was a thoroughly kindly, as well as gifted woman, and much appreciated by + those of the poet's friends who knew her as a resident in London during + her last years. A portrait which she took of him in 1874 is considered by + some persons very good. + </p> + <p> + At about this time also, and probably through Miss Haworth, he became + acquainted with Miss Martineau. + </p> + <p> + Soon after his introduction to Macready, if not before, Mr. Browning + became busy with the thought of writing for the stage. The diary has this + entry for February 16, 1836: + </p> + <p> + 'Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot of a tragedy, which + Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. He said that I had <i>bit</i> + him by my performance of Othello, and I told him I hoped I should make the + blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for the miseries, the + humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I have endured in my + profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit of poetry whose + influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded drama. May it + be!' + </p> + <p> + But Narses was abandoned, and the more serious inspiration and more + definite motive were to come later. They connect themselves with one of + the pleasant social occurrences which must have lived in the young poet's + memory. On May 26 'Ion' had been performed for the first time and with + great success, Mr. Macready sustaining the principal part; and the great + actor and a number of their common friends had met at supper at Serjeant + Talfourd's house to celebrate the occasion. The party included Wordsworth + and Landor, both of whom Mr. Browning then met for the first time. Toasts + flew right and left. Mr. Browning's health was proposed by Serjeant + Talfourd as that of the youngest poet of England, and Wordsworth responded + to the appeal with very kindly courtesy. The conversation afterwards + turned upon plays, and Macready, who had ignored a half-joking question of + Miss Mitford, whether, if she wrote one, he would act in it, overtook + Browning as they were leaving the house, and said, 'Write a play, + Browning, and keep me from going to America.' The reply was, 'Shall it be + historical and English; what do you say to a drama on Strafford?' + </p> + <p> + This ready response on the poet's part showed that Strafford, as a + dramatic subject, had been occupying his thoughts. The subject was in the + air, because Forster was then bringing out a life of that statesman, with + others belonging to the same period. It was more than in the air, so far + as Browning was concerned, because his friend had been disabled, either + through sickness or sorrow, from finishing this volume by the appointed + time, and he, as well he might, had largely helped him in its completion. + It was, however, not till August 3 that Macready wrote in his diary: + </p> + <p> + 'Forster told me that Browning had fixed on Strafford for the subject of a + tragedy; he could not have hit upon one that I could have more readily + concurred in.' + </p> + <p> + A previous entry of May 30, the occasion of which is only implied, shows + with how high an estimate of Mr. Browning's intellectual importance + Macready's professional relations to him began. + </p> + <p> + 'Arriving at chambers, I found a note from Browning. What can I say upon + it? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and cares of + years: it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest, honour I + have through life received.' + </p> + <p> + The estimate maintained itself in reference to the value of Mr. Browning's + work, since he wrote on March 13, 1837: + </p> + <p> + 'Read before dinner a few pages of 'Paracelsus', which raises my wonder + the more I read it. . . . Looked over two plays, which it was not possible + to read, hardly as I tried. . . . Read some scenes in 'Strafford', which + restore one to the world of sense and feeling once again.' + </p> + <p> + But as the day of the performance drew near, he became at once more + anxious and more critical. An entry of April 28 comments somewhat sharply + on the dramatic faults of 'Strafford', besides declaring the writer's + belief that the only chance for it is in the acting, which, 'by + possibility, might carry it to the end without disapprobation,' though he + dares not hope without opposition. It is quite conceivable that his first + complete study of the play, and first rehearsal of it, brought to light + deficiencies which had previously escaped him; but so complete a change of + sentiment points also to private causes of uneasiness and irritation; and, + perhaps, to the knowledge that its being saved by collective good acting + was out of the question. + </p> + <p> + 'Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on May 1. Mr. Browning + wrote to Mr. Fox after one of the last rehearsals: + </p> + <p> + May Day, Lincoln's Inn Fields. + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—All my endeavours to procure a copy before this morning + have been fruitless. I send the first book of the first bundle. <i>Pray</i> + look over it—the alterations to-night will be considerable. The + complexion of the piece is, I grieve to say, 'perfect gallows' just now—our + <i>King</i>, Mr. Dale, being . . . but you'll see him, and, I fear, not + much applaud. Your unworthy son, in things literary, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + P.S. (in pencil).—A most unnecessary desire, but urged on me by + Messrs. Longman: no notice on Str. in to-night's True Sun,* lest the other + papers be jealous!!! + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Fox reviewed 'Strafford' in the 'True Sun'. +</pre> + <p> + A second letter, undated, but evidently written a day or two later, refers + to the promised notice, which had then appeared. + </p> + <p> + Tuesday Night. + </p> + <p> + No words can express my feelings: I happen to be much annoyed and unwell—but + your most generous notice has almost made 'my soul well and happy now.' + </p> + <p> + I thank you, my most kind, most constant friend, from my heart for your + goodness—which is brave enough, just now. I am ever and increasingly + yours, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + You will be glad to see me on the earliest occasion, will you not? I shall + certainly come. + </p> + <p> + A letter from Miss Flower to Miss Sarah Fox (sister to the Rev. William + Fox), at Norwich, contains the following passage, which evidently + continues a chapter of London news: + </p> + <p> + 'Then 'Strafford'; were you not pleased to hear of the success of one you + must, I think, remember a very little boy, years ago. If not, you have + often heard us speak of Robert Browning: and it is a great deal to have + accomplished a successful tragedy, although he seems a good deal annoyed + at the go of things behind the scenes, and declares he will never write a + play again, as long as he lives. You have no idea of the ignorance and + obstinacy of the whole set, with here and there an exception; think of his + having to write out the meaning of the word 'impeachment', as some of them + thought it meant 'poaching'.' + </p> + <p> + On the first night, indeed, the fate of 'Strafford' hung in the balance; + it was saved by Macready and Miss Helen Faucit. After this they must have + been better supported, as it was received on the second night with + enthusiasm by a full house. The catastrophe came after the fifth + performance, with the desertion of the actor who had sustained the part of + Pym. We cannot now judge whether, even under favourable circumstances, the + play would have had as long a run as was intended; but the casting vote in + favour of this view is given by the conduct of Mr. Osbaldistone, the + manager, when it was submitted to him. The diary says, March 30, that he + caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produce it without delay. The + terms he offered to the author must also have been considered favourable + in those days. + </p> + <p> + The play was published in April by Longman, this time not at the author's + expense; but it brought no return either to him or to his publisher. It + was dedicated 'in all affectionate admiration' to William C. Macready. + </p> + <p> + We gain some personal glimpses of the Browning of 1835-6; one especially + through Mrs. Bridell-Fox, who thus describes her first meeting with him: + </p> + <p> + 'I remember . . . when Mr. Browning entered the drawing-room, with a quick + light step; and on hearing from me that my father was out, and in fact + that nobody was at home but myself, he said: "It's my birthday to-day; + I'll wait till they come in," and sitting down to the piano, he added: "If + it won't disturb you, I'll play till they do." And as he turned to the + instrument, the bells of some neighbouring church suddenly burst out with + a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, as if in response + to the remark that it was his birthday. He was then slim and dark, and + very handsome; and—may I hint it—just a trifle of a dandy, + addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things: quite "the glass of + fashion and the mould of form." But full of ambition, eager for success, + eager for fame, and, what's more, determined to conquer fame and to + achieve success.' + </p> + <p> + I do not think his memory ever taxed him with foppishness, though he may + have had the innocent personal vanity of an attractive young man at his + first period of much seeing and being seen; but all we know of him at that + time bears out the impression Mrs. Fox conveys, of a joyous, artless + confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quickly + reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences had + freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. The + self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this side + it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for kindness, + and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other men. His + powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in this way. He was + very attractive to women and, as we have seen, warmly loved by very + various types of men; but, except in its poetic sense, his emotional + nature was by no means then in the ascendant: a fact difficult to realize + when we remember the passion of his childhood's love for mother and home, + and the new and deep capabilities of affection to be developed in future + days. The poet's soul in him was feeling its wings; the realities of life + had not yet begun to weight them. + </p> + <p> + We see him again at the 'Ion' supper, in the grace and modesty with which + he received the honours then adjudged to him. The testimony has been said + to come from Miss Mitford, but may easily have been supplied by Miss + Haworth, who was also present on this occasion. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's impulse towards play-writing had not, as we have seen, + begun with 'Strafford'. It was still very far from being exhausted. And + though he had struck out for himself another line of dramatic activity, + his love for the higher theatrical life, and the legitimate inducements of + the more lucrative and not necessarily less noble form of composition, + might ultimately in some degree have prevailed with him if circumstances + had been such as to educate his theatrical capabilities, and to reward + them. His first acted drama was, however, an interlude to the production + of the important group of poems which was to be completed by 'Sordello'; + and he alludes to this later work in an also discarded preface to + 'Strafford', as one on which he had for some time been engaged. He even + characterizes the Tragedy as an attempt 'to freshen a jaded mind by + diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch.' 'Sordello' again + occupied him during the remainder of 1837 and the beginning of 1838; and + by the spring of this year he must have been thankful to vary the scene + and mode of his labours by means of a first visit to Italy. He announces + his impending journey, with its immediate plan and purpose, in the + following note: + </p> + <p> + To John Robertson, Esq. + </p> + <p> + Good Friday, 1838. + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—I was not fortunate enough to find you the day before + yesterday—and must tell you very hurriedly that I sail this morning + for Venice—intending to finish my poem among the scenes it + describes. I shall have your good wishes I know. Believe me, in return, + Dear sir, Yours faithfully and obliged, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + Mr. John Robertson had influence with the 'Westminster Review', either as + editor, or member of its staff. He had been introduced to Mr. Browning by + Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of 'Paracelsus', had promised + careful attention for 'Sordello'; but, when the time approached, he made + conditions of early reading, &c., which Mr. Browning thought so unfair + towards other magazines that he refused to fulfil them. He lost his + review, and the goodwill of its intending writer; and even Miss Martineau + was ever afterwards cooler towards him, though his attitude in the matter + had been in some degree prompted by a chivalrous partisanship for her. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 7 + </h2> + <h3> + 1838-1841 + </h3> + <p> + First Italian Journey—Letters to Miss Haworth—Mr. John Kenyon—'Sordello'—Letter + to Miss Flower—'Pippa Passes'—'Bells and Pomegranates'. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the 'Norham + Castle', a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himself + the only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, and some + characteristic personal details, are given in the following letter to Miss + Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written before that year's + summer had closed. + </p> + <p> + Tuesday Evening. + </p> + <p> + Dear Miss Haworth,—Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom and notice the + clear little honey-drop depending from every flower. I have just found it + out to my no small satisfaction,—a bee's breakfast. I only answer + for the long-blossomed sort, though,—indeed, for this plant in my + room. Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. All this while I forget that + you will perhaps never guess the good of the discovery: I have, you are to + know, such a love for flowers and leaves—some leaves—that I + every now and then, in an impatience at being able to possess myself of + them thoroughly, to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent,—bite + them to bits—so there will be some sense in that. How I remember the + flowers—even grasses—of places I have seen! Some one flower or + weed, I should say, that gets some strangehow connected with them. + </p> + <p> + Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park, + for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland. + </p> + <p> + Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receive + last week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write,—for + none of your written reasons, however. You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, + if the fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent (except a + scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' the Straits of Gibraltar)—but + I did hammer out some four, two of which are addressed to you, two to the + Queen*—the whole to go in Book III—perhaps. I called you + 'Eyebright'—meaning a simple and sad sort of translation of + "Euphrasia" into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, or + Fanny, was—and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there + is anything in them to care for, good or bad. Shall I say 'Eyebright'? + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen. +</pre> + <p> + I was disappointed in one thing, Canova. + </p> + <p> + What companions should I have? + </p> + <p> + The story of the ship must have reached you 'with a difference' as Ophelia + says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it to Forster, I + suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over &c., &c., + &c.—As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captain + woke me one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keel + uppermost half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to some + floating canvas, and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, and + the little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. Our men + made the wreck fast in high glee at having 'new trousers out of the + sails,' and quite sure she was a French boat, broken from her moorings at + Algiers, close by. Ropes were next hove (hang this sea-talk!) round her + stanchions, and after a quarter of an hour's pushing at the capstan, the + vessel righted suddenly, one dead body floating out; five more were in the + forecastle, and had probably been there a month under a blazing African + sun—don't imagine the wretched state of things. They were, these + six, the 'watch below'—(I give you the result of the day's + observation)—the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard + at first. One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was a + smuggler bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionate + guns, taking up the whole deck, which was convex and—nay, look you! + (a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck is here + introduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square the place where + the bodies lay. (All the 'bulwarks' or sides of the top, carried away by + the waves.) Well, the sailors covered up the hatchway, broke up the + aft-deck, hauled up tobacco and cigars, such heaps of them, and then bale + after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, till the captain was + half-frightened—he would get at the ship's papers, he said; so these + poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, and pitched into the sea, the very + sailors calling to each other to 'cover the faces',—no papers of + importance were found, however, but fifteen swords, powder and ball enough + for a dozen such boats, and bundles of cotton, &c., that would have + taken a day to get out, but the captain vowed that after five o'clock she + should be cut adrift: accordingly she was cast loose, not a third of her + cargo having been touched; and you hardly can conceive the strange sight + when the battered hulk turned round, actually, and looked at us, and then + reeled off, like a mutilated creature from some scoundrel French surgeon's + lecture-table, into the most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world: + there; only thank me for not taking you at your word, and giving you the + whole 'story'.—'What I did?' I went to Trieste, then Venice—then + through Treviso and Bassano to the mountains, delicious Asolo, all my + places and castles, you will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua, and Venice + again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the Tyrol), Munich, Salzburg in + Franconia, Frankfort and Mayence; down the Rhine to Cologne, then to + Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Antwerp—then home. Shall you come to + town, anywhere near town, soon? I shall be off again as soon as my book is + out, whenever that will be. + </p> + <p> + I never read that book of Miss Martineau's, so can't understand what you + mean. Macready is looking well; I just saw him the other day for a minute + after the play; his Kitely was Kitely—superb from his flat cap down + to his shining shoes. I saw very few Italians, 'to know', that is. Those I + did see I liked. Your friend Pepoli has been lecturing here, has he not? + </p> + <p> + I shall be vexed if you don't write soon, a long Elstree letter. What are + you doing, writing—drawing? Ever yours truly R. B. To Miss Haworth, + Barham Lodge, Elstree. + </p> + <p> + Miss Browning's account of this experience, supplied from memory of her + brother's letters and conversations, contains some vivid supplementary + details. The drifting away of the wreck put probably no effective distance + between it and the ship; hence the necessity of 'sailing away' from it. + </p> + <p> + 'Of the dead pirates, one had his hands clasped as if praying; another, a + severe gash in his head. The captain burnt disinfectants and blew + gunpowder, before venturing on board, but even then, he, a powerful man, + turned very sick with the smell and sight. They stayed one whole day by + the side, but the sailors, in spite of orders, began to plunder the + cigars, &c. The captain said privately to Robert, "I cannot restrain + my men, and they will bring the plague into our ship, so I mean quietly in + the night to sail away." Robert took two cutlasses and a dagger; they were + of the coarsest workmanship, intended for use. At the end of one of the + sheaths was a heavy bullet, so that it could be used as a sling. The day + after, to their great relief, a heavy rain fell and cleansed the ship. + Captain Davidson reported the sight of the wreck and its condition as soon + as he arrived at Trieste.' + </p> + <p> + Miss Browning also relates that the weather was stormy in the Bay of + Biscay, and for the first fortnight her brother suffered terribly. The + captain supported him on to the deck as they passed through the Straits of + Gibraltar, that he might not lose the sight. He recovered, as we know, + sufficiently to write 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'; + but we can imagine in what revulsion of feeling towards firm land and + healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born in him. The poem + was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simboli trasportati al + Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his; and, in spite of + perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, the pencil dints are still + visible. The little poem 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' was written at the + same time, and in the same manner. + </p> + <p> + By the time they reached Trieste, the captain, a rough north-countryman, + had become so attached to Mr. Browning that he offered him a free passage + to Constantinople; and after they had parted, carefully preserved, by way + of remembrance, a pair of very old gloves worn by him on deck. Mr. + Browning might, on such an occasion, have dispensed with gloves + altogether; but it was one of his peculiarities that he could never endure + to be out of doors with uncovered hands. The captain also showed his + friendly feeling on his return to England by bringing to Miss Browning, + whom he had heard of through her brother, a present of six bottles of + attar of roses. + </p> + <p> + The inspirations of Asolo and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'In a + Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequent + vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism which + Asolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself at a much later + time. + </p> + <p> + A second letter to Miss Haworth is undated, but may have been written at + any period of this or the ensuing year. + </p> + <p> + I have received, a couple of weeks since, a present—an album large + and gaping, and as Cibber's Richard says of the 'fair Elizabeth': 'My + heart is empty—she shall fill it'—so say I (impudently?) of my + grand trouble-table, which holds a sketch or two by my fine fellow + Monclar, one lithograph—his own face of faces,—'all the rest + was amethyst.' F. H. everywhere! not a soul beside 'in the chrystal + silence there,' and it locks, this album; now, don't shower drawings on + M., who has so many advantages over me as it is: or at least don't bid <i>me</i> + of all others say what he is to have. + </p> + <p> + The 'Master' is somebody you don't know, W. J. Fox, a magnificent and + poetical nature, who used to write in reviews when I was a boy, and to + whom my verses, a bookful, written at the ripe age of twelve and thirteen, + were shown: which verses he praised not a little; which praise comforted + me not a little. Then I lost sight of him for years and years; then I + published <i>anonymously</i> a little poem—which he, to my + inexpressible delight, praised and expounded in a gallant article in a + magazine of which he was the editor; then I found him out again; he got a + publisher for 'Paracelsus' (I read it to him in manuscript) and is in + short 'my literary father'. Pretty nearly the same thing did he for Miss + Martineau, as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the 'talk', + table-talk was about—I think she must have told you the results of + the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, and that day's, the + dinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. She is to give me advice + about my worldly concerns, and not before I need it! + </p> + <p> + I cannot say or sing the pleasure your way of writing gives me—do go + on, and tell me all sorts of things, 'the story' for a beginning; but your + moralisings on 'your age' and the rest, are—now what <i>are</i> + they? not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about: they are + 'Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia), for teaching me that word. + </p> + <p> + I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar looks + piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; he is to + take my portrait to-day (a famous one he <i>has</i> taken!) and very like + he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . . + </p> + <p> + Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M——to + help you! I am going to begin the finishing 'Sordello'—and to begin + thinking a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms + on 'Strafford') and I want to have <i>another</i> tragedy in prospect, I + write best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I + learned that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded + on my story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw + it up. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrast + with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many + half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough + self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus, or + a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling? . . + . + </p> + <p> + The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and + 'The Return of the Druses'. + </p> + <p> + This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work; it + is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto + occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's + 'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even imaginary, + of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experience was still + distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he was nearer to it + than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted with Mr. + Kenyon. + </p> + <p> + When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by a pleasant + elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, asked leave to + address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert? had he gone + to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was he still alive?' On + receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say that Mr. Browning and he + had been great chums at school, and though they had lost sight of each + other in after-life, he had never forgotten his old playmate, but even + alluded to him in a little book which he had published a few years + before.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * The volume is entitled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833), + and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays, + and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted. +</pre> + <p> + The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered a schoolfellow + named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is his face,' and sketched + a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized that of the grown man. + The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon proved ever afterwards a warm + friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in a letter to Professor Knight of St. + Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was one of the best of human beings, with a + general sympathy for excellence of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship + of Wordsworth, of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate + with most of my contemporaries of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house + that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there when he came + to town. + </p> + <p> + In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by far the + slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. This seemed, indeed, a + condition of its peculiar character. It had lain much deeper in the + author's mind than the various slighter works which were thrown off in the + course of its inception. We know from the preface to 'Strafford' that it + must have been begun soon after 'Paracelsus'. Its plan may have belonged + to a still earlier date; for it connects itself with 'Pauline' as the + history of a poetic soul; with both the earlier poems, as the + manifestation of the self-conscious spiritual ambitions which were + involved in that history. This first imaginative mood was also outgrowing + itself in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedies written + before the conclusion of 'Sordello' impress us as the product of a + different mental state—as the work of a more balanced imagination + and a more mature mind. + </p> + <p> + It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet became + embodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical character of + the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginative + psychological treatment, or whether the circumstances among which he moved + seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type. The + inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his testimony to + the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue. That period of + Italian history must also have assumed, if it did not already possess, a + great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, since he studied no less than thirty + works upon it, which were to contribute little more to his dramatic + picture than what he calls 'decoration', or 'background'. But the one + guide which he has given us to the reading of the poem is his assertion + that its historical circumstance is only to be regarded as background; and + the extent to which he identified himself with the figure of Sordello has + been proved by his continued belief that its prominence was throughout + maintained. He could still declare, so late as 1863, in his preface to the + reprint of the work, that his 'stress' in writing it had lain 'on the + incidents in the development of a soul, little else' being to his mind + 'worth study'. I cannot therefore help thinking that recent investigations + of the life and character of the actual poet, however in themselves + praiseworthy and interesting, have been often in some degree a mistake; + because, directly or indirectly, they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to + an historical reality, which his author had grasped, as far as was then + possible, but to which he was never intended to conform. + </p> + <p> + Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, the + sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other men—the + sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower into the larger + self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and this takes place in + accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief that poetry is the + appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; that the true poet must be their + exponent. The work is thus obviously, in point of moral utterance, an + advance on 'Pauline'. Its metaphysics are, also, more distinctly + formulated than those of either 'Pauline' or 'Paracelsus'; and the + frequent use of the term Will in its metaphysical sense so strongly points + to German associations that it is difficult to realize their absence, then + and always, from Mr. Browning's mind. But he was emphatic in his assurance + that he knew neither the German philosophers nor their reflection in + Coleridge, who would have seemed a likely medium between them and him. + Miss Martineau once said to him that he had no need to study German + thought, since his mind was German enough—by which she possibly + meant too German—already. + </p> + <p> + The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the + picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for this + very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr. + Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not preclude the + consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopular + character had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, some years ago, + that 'Sordello' was represented in a collection of descriptive passages + which a friend of his was proposing to make. 'There is a great deal of + that in it,' he said, 'and it has always been overlooked.' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I + believe, by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of 'The Ring and + the Book', and I do not like to use it without saying so. + But it is one of those which must have spontaneously + suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's + readers. +</pre> + <p> + It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added + themselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the + reason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some + comments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, then quite + a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth, who, in her + turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without making quite clear to + him the source from which they sprang. He took the criticism much more + seriously than it deserved, and condensed the language of this his next + important publication into what was nearly its present form. + </p> + <p> + In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr. + Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in the + sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be. + 'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of 'Men + and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspired by + every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (real or + imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already lost + the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for the Browning of + 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poem were in many + respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Passes', published one year later, the + poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has entered on the + inheritance of the other. + </p> + <p> + Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls + this 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the quality of + humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a strongly marked + philosophy of life—or more properly, of association—from which + its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of these + evidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish in + personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower written + at about the same time. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from + Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'. +</pre> + <p> + Monday night, March 9 (? 1841). + </p> + <p> + My dear Miss Flower,—I have this moment received your very kind note—of + course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are somewhat + lightened already (confess—nay 'confess' is vile—you will be + rejoiced to holla from the house-top)—will go on, or rather go off, + lightening, and will be—oh, where <i>will</i> they be half a dozen + years hence? + </p> + <p> + Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you and + Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects—mean + to song-write, play-write forthwith,—and, believe me, dear Miss + Flower, Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'—could we not make some arrangement + about it? The lyrics <i>want</i> your music—five or six in all—how + say you? When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode—but + 'all goeth by God's Will.' + </p> + <p> + The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem, + inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first two + verses: + </p> + <p> + On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Passes'. + </p> + <p> + (Query—Passes what?—the critic's comprehension.) + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, + Automatons of which the world is full, + Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, + That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, + Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, + A mighty truth now wondrously displayed. + + A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, + Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong + The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along + His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— + Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, + Against a mountain he can neither double + Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, + Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he + Takes it into his horny head to swear + There's no such thing as any mountain there. +</pre> + <p> + The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; but + these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must have made + them a welcome tribute to friendship. + </p> + <p> + There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Passes'; it + is less surprising that there should have been very little of 'Sordello'. + Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of earnest + appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable notice of + these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, in Dr. + Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poems which + was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poets and painters + of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on a period of + general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of his life, and much + that has since become most deservedly popular in his work. + </p> + <p> + 'Pippa Passes' had appeared as the first instalment of 'Bells and + Pomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. This + poem, and the two tragedies, 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The + Return of the Druses'—first christened 'Mansoor, the Hierophant'—were + lying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, perhaps not very + vigorously sought, a publisher for them. + </p> + <p> + 'One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon, the + publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out some + editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively cheap form, + and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems as pamphlets, + using this cheap type, the expense would be very inconsiderable. The poet + jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each poem should form a + separate brochure of just one sheet—sixteen pages in double columns—the + entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or fifteen pounds. In this + fashion began the celebrated series of 'Bells and Pomegranates', eight + numbers of which, a perfect treasury of fine poetry, came out successively + between 1841 and 1846. 'Pippa Passes' led the way, and was priced first at + sixpence; then, the sale being inconsiderable, at a shilling, which + greatly encouraged the sale; and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown, at which + the price of each number finally rested.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series are + announced in the following preface to 'Pippa Passes', of which, in later + editions, only the dedicatory words appear: + </p> + <p> + 'Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter I + care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured people + applauded it:—ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in + the same way that should better reward their attention. What follows I + mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at + intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which + they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. Of + course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and to provide + against a certain and but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say + now—what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say + circumstantially enough at the close—that I dedicate my best + intentions most admiringly to the author of "Ion"—most + affectionately to Serjeant Talfourd.' + </p> + <p> + A necessary explanation of the general title was reserved for the last + number: and does something towards justifying the popular impression that + Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight from his readers. + </p> + <p> + 'Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take the + opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by + that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, + or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with + thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the symbol was + preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is actually one of the + most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) acceptations of the + phrase; because I confess that, letting authority alone, I supposed the + bare words, in such juxtaposition, would sufficiently convey the desired + meaning. "Faith and good works" is another fancy, for instance, and + perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in + the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle crowned his Theology (in the 'Camera + della Segnatura') with blossoms of the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari + would be sure to come after, and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle + buone opere—il qual Pomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del + Pontefice appresso gli Ebrei."' + </p> + <p> + The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers of 'Bells and + Pomegranates' were: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I. Pippa Passes. 1841. + II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842. + III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842. + Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse; + III. My Wife Gertrude. ['Boot and Saddle'.] + Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France. + Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish). + In a Gondola. + Artemis Prologuizes. + Waring; I.; II. + Queen Worship; I. Rudel and The Lady of Tripoli; II. Cristina. + Madhouse Cells; I. [Johannes Agricola.]; II. [Porphyria.] + Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 1842. + The Pied Piper of Hamelin; a Child's Story. + IV. The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. 1843. + V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy, in Three Acts. 1843. + [Second Edition, same year.] + VI. Colombe's Birthday. A Play, in Five Acts. 1844. + VII. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845. + 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (16—.)' + Pictor Ignotus. (Florence, 15—.) + Italy in England. + England in Italy. (Piano di Sorrento.) + The Lost Leader. + The Lost Mistress. + Home Thoughts, from Abroad. + The Tomb at St. Praxed's: (Rome, 15—.) + Garden Fancies; I. The Flower's Name; + II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. + France and Spain; I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime); + II. Spain—The Confessional. + The Flight of the Duchess. + Earth's Immortalities. + Song. ('Nay but you, who do not love her.') + The Boy and the Angel. + Night and Morning; I. Night; II. Morning. + Claret and Tokay. + Saul. (Part I.) + Time's Revenges. + The Glove. (Peter Ronsard loquitur.) + VIII. and last. Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy. 1846. +</pre> + <p> + This publication has seemed entitled to a detailed notice, because it is + practically extinct, and because its nature and circumstance confer on it + a biographical interest not possessed by any subsequent issue of Mr. + Browning's works. The dramas and poems of which it is composed belong to + that more mature period of the author's life, in which the analysis of his + work ceases to form a necessary part of his history. Some few of them, + however, are significant to it; and this is notably the case with 'A Blot + in the 'Scutcheon'. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 8 + </h2> + <h3> + 1841-1844 + </h3> + <p> + 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'—Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady Martin—Charles + Dickens—Other Dramas and Minor Poems—Letters to Miss Lee; Miss + Haworth; Miss Flower—Second Italian Journey; Naples—E. J. + Trelawney—Stendhal. + </p> + <p> + 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was written for Macready, who meant to perform + the principal part; and we may conclude that the appeal for it was urgent, + since it was composed in the space of four or five days. Macready's + journals must have contained a fuller reference to both the play and its + performance (at Drury Lane, February 1843) than appears in published form; + but considerable irritation had arisen between him and Mr. Browning, and + he possibly wrote something which his editor, Sir Frederick Pollock, as + the friend of both, thought it best to omit. What occurred on this + occasion has been told in some detail by Mr. Gosse, and would not need + repeating if the question were only of re-telling it on the same + authority, in another person's words; but, through the kindness of Mr. and + Mrs. Frank Hill, I am able to give Mr. Browning's direct statement of the + case, as also his expressed judgment upon it. The statement was made more + than forty years later than the events to which it refers, but will, + nevertheless, be best given in its direct connection with them. + </p> + <p> + The merits, or demerits, of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' had been freshly + brought under discussion by its performance in London through the action + of the Browning Society, and in Washington by Mr. Laurence Barrett; and it + became the subject of a paragraph in one of the theatrical articles + prepared for the 'Daily News'. Mr. Hill was then editor of the paper, and + when the article came to him for revision, he thought it right to submit + to Mr. Browning the passages devoted to his tragedy, which embodied some + then prevailing, but, he strongly suspected, erroneous impressions + concerning it. The results of this kind and courteous proceeding appear in + the following letter. + </p> + <p> + 19, Warwick Crescent: December 15, 1884. + </p> + <p> + My dear Mr. Hill,—It was kind and considerate of you to suppress the + paragraph which you send me,—and of which the publication would have + been unpleasant for reasons quite other than as regarding my own work,—which + exists to defend or accuse itself. You will judge of the true reasons when + I tell you the facts—so much of them as contradicts the statements + of your critic—who, I suppose, has received a stimulus from the + notice, in an American paper which arrived last week, of Mr. Laurence + Barrett's intention 'shortly to produce the play' in New York—and + subsequently in London: so that 'the failure' of forty-one years ago might + be duly influential at present—or two years hence perhaps. The 'mere + amateurs' are no high game. + </p> + <p> + Macready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged at the + Haymarket, and retained it for Drury Lane, of which I was ignorant that he + was about to become the manager: he accepted it 'at the instigation' of + nobody,—and Charles Dickens was not in England when he did so: it + was read to him after his return, by Forster—and the glowing letter + which contains his opinion of it, although directed by him to be shown to + myself, was never heard of nor seen by me till printed in Forster's book + some thirty years after. When the Drury Lane season began, Macready + informed me that he should act the play when he had brought out two others—'The + Patrician's Daughter', and 'Plighted Troth': having done so, he wrote to + me that the former had been unsuccessful in money-drawing, and the latter + had 'smashed his arrangements altogether': but he would still produce my + play. I had—in my ignorance of certain symptoms better understood by + Macready's professional acquaintances—I had no notion that it was a + proper thing, in such a case, to 'release him from his promise'; on the + contrary, I should have fancied that such a proposal was offensive. Soon + after, Macready begged that I would call on him: he said the play had been + read to the actors the day before, 'and laughed at from beginning to end': + on my speaking my mind about this, he explained that the reading had been + done by the Prompter, a grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, + ill at ease in the love scenes, and that he would himself make amends by + reading the play next morning—which he did, and very adequately—but + apprised me that, in consequence of the state of his mind, harassed by + business and various trouble, the principal character must be taken by Mr. + Phelps; and again I failed to understand,—what Forster subsequently + assured me was plain as the sun at noonday,—that to allow at + Macready's Theatre any other than Macready to play the principal part in a + new piece was suicidal,—and really believed I was meeting his + exigencies by accepting the substitution. At the rehearsal, Macready + announced that Mr. Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the + part: on the third rehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and + sat in a chair while Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next + morning Mr. Phelps waylaid me at the stage-door to say, with much emotion, + that it never was intended that <i>he</i> should be instrumental in the + success of a new tragedy, and that Macready would play Tresham on the + ground that himself, Phelps, was unable to do so. He added that he could + not expect me to waive such an advantage,—but that, if I were + prepared to waive it, 'he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the + words in his memory by next day.' I bade him follow me to the green-room, + and hear what I decided upon—which was that as Macready had given + him the part, he should keep it: this was on a Thursday; he rehearsed on + Friday and Saturday,—the play being acted the same evening,—<i>of + the fifth day after the 'reading' by MacReady</i>. Macready at once wished + to reduce the importance of the 'play',—as he styled it in the + bills,—tried to leave out so much of the text, that I baffled him by + getting it printed in four-and-twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He + wanted me to call it 'The Sister'!—and I have before me, while I + write, the stage-acting copy, with two lines of his own insertion to avoid + the tragical ending—Tresham was to announce his intention of going + into a monastery! all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and + Macready alone, could produce a veritable 'tragedy', unproduced before. + Not a shilling was spent on scenery or dresses—and a striking scene + which had been used for the 'Patrician's Daughter', did duty a second + time. If your critic considers this treatment of the play an instance of + 'the failure of powerful and experienced actors' to ensure its success,—I + can only say that my own opinion was shown by at once breaking off a + friendship of many years—a friendship which had a right to be + plainly and simply told that the play I had contributed as a proof of it, + would through a change of circumstances, no longer be to my friend's + advantage,—all I could possibly care for. Only recently, when by the + publication of Macready's journals the extent of his pecuniary + embarrassments at that time was made known, could I in a measure + understand his motives for such conduct—and less than ever + understand why he so strangely disguised and disfigured them. If + 'applause' means success, the play thus maimed and maltreated was + successful enough: it 'made way' for Macready's own Benefit, and the + Theatre closed a fortnight after. + </p> + <p> + Having kept silence for all these years, in spite of repeated + explanations, in the style of your critic's, that the play 'failed in + spite of the best endeavours' &c. I hardly wish to revive a very + painful matter: on the other hand,—as I have said; my play subsists, + and is as open to praise or blame as it was forty-one years ago: is it + necessary to search out what somebody or other,—not improbably a + jealous adherent of Macready, 'the only organizer of theatrical + victories', chose to say on the subject? If the characters are 'abhorrent' + and 'inscrutable'—and the language conformable,—they were so + when Dickens pronounced upon them, and will be so whenever the critic + pleases to re-consider them—which, if he ever has an opportunity of + doing, apart from the printed copy, I can assure you is through no motion + of mine. This particular experience was sufficient: but the Play is out of + my power now; though amateurs and actors may do what they please. + </p> + <p> + Of course, this being the true story, I should desire that it were told <i>thus</i> + and no otherwise, if it must be told at all: but <i>not</i> as a statement + of mine,—the substance of it has been partly stated already by more + than one qualified person, and if I have been willing to let the poor + matter drop, surely there is no need that it should be gone into now when + Macready and his Athenaeum upholder are no longer able to speak for + themselves: this is just a word to you, dear Mr. Hill, and may be brought + under the notice of your critic if you think proper—but only for the + facts—not as a communication for the public. + </p> + <p> + Yes, thank you, I am in full health, as you wish—and I wish you and + Mrs. Hill, I assure you, all the good appropriate to the season. My sister + has completely recovered from her illness, and is grateful for your + enquiries. + </p> + <p> + With best regards to Mrs. Hill, and an apology for this long letter, which + however,—when once induced to write it,—I could not well + shorten,—believe me, Yours truly ever Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + I well remember Mr. Browning's telling me how, when he returned to the + green-room, on that critical day, he drove his hat more firmly on to his + head, and said to Macready, 'I beg pardon, sir, but you have given the + part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied that he should act it;' and how + Macready, on hearing this, crushed up the MS., and flung it on to the + ground. He also admitted that his own manner had been provocative; but he + was indignant at what he deemed the unjust treatment which Mr. Phelps had + received. The occasion of the next letter speaks for itself. + </p> + <p> + December 21, 1884. + </p> + <p> + My dear Mr. Hill,—Your goodness must extend to letting me have the + last word—one of sincere thanks. You cannot suppose I doubted for a + moment of a good-will which I have had abundant proof of. I only took the + occasion your considerate letter gave me, to tell the simple truth which + my forty years' silence is a sign I would only tell on compulsion. I never + thought your critic had any less generous motive for alluding to the + performance as he did than that which he professes: he doubtless heard the + account of the matter which Macready and his intimates gave currency to at + the time; and which, being confined for a while to their limited number, I + never chose to notice. But of late years I have got to <i>read</i>,—not + merely <i>hear</i>,—of the play's failure 'which all the efforts of + my friend the great actor could not avert;' and the nonsense of this + untruth gets hard to bear. I told you the principal facts in the letter I + very hastily wrote: I could, had it been worth while, corroborate them by + others in plenty, and refer to the living witnesses—Lady Martin, + Mrs. Stirling, and (I believe) Mr. Anderson: it was solely through the + admirable loyalty of the two former that . . . a play . . . deprived of + every advantage, in the way of scenery, dresses, and rehearsing—proved—what + Macready himself declared it to be—'a complete success'. <i>So</i> + he sent a servant to tell me, 'in case there was a call for the author at + the end of the act'—to which I replied that the author had been too + sick and sorry at the whole treatment of his play to do any such thing. + Such a call there truly <i>was</i>, and Mr. Anderson had to come forward + and 'beg the author to come forward if he were in the house—a + circumstance of which he was not aware:' whereat the author laughed at him + from a box just opposite. . . . I would submit to anybody drawing a + conclusion from one or two facts past contradiction, whether that play + could have thoroughly failed which was not only not withdrawn at once but + acted three nights in the same week, and years afterwards, reproduced at + his own theatre, during my absence in Italy, by Mr. Phelps—the + person most completely aware of the untoward circumstances which stood + originally in the way of success. Why not enquire how it happens that, + this second time, there was no doubt of the play's doing as well as plays + ordinarily do? for those were not the days of a 'run'. + </p> + <p> + . . . . . + </p> + <p> + . . . This 'last word' has indeed been an Aristophanic one of fifty + syllables: but I have spoken it, relieved myself, and commend all that + concerns me to the approved and valued friend of whom I am proud to + account myself in corresponding friendship, His truly ever Robert + Browning. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning also alludes to Mr. Phelps's acting as not only not having + been detrimental to the play, but having helped to save it, in the + conspiracy of circumstances which seemed to invoke its failure. This was a + mistake, since Macready had been anxious to resume the part, and would + have saved it, to say the least, more thoroughly. It must, however, be + remembered that the irritation which these letters express was due much + less to the nature of the facts recorded in them than to the manner in + which they had been brought before Mr. Browning's mind. Writing on the + subject to Lady Martin in February 1881, he had spoken very temperately of + Macready's treatment of his play, while deprecating the injustice towards + his own friendship which its want of frankness involved: and many years + before this, the touch of a common sorrow had caused the old feeling, at + least momentarily, to well up again. The two met for the first time after + these occurrences when Mr. Browning had returned, a widower, from Italy. + Mr. Macready, too, had recently lost his wife; and Mr. Browning could only + start forward, grasp the hand of his old friend, and in a voice choked + with emotion say, 'O Macready!' + </p> + <p> + Lady Martin has spoken to me of the poet's attitude on the occasion of + this performance as being full of generous sympathy for those who were + working with him, as well as of the natural anxiety of a young author for + his own success. She also remains convinced that this sympathy led him + rather to over-than to under-rate the support he received. She wrote + concerning it in 'Blackwood's Magazine', March 1881: + </p> + <p> + 'It seems but yesterday that I sat by his [Mr. Elton's] side in the + green-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful drama, 'A Blot in + the 'Scutcheon'. As a rule Mr. Macready always read the new plays. But + owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was entrusted on + this occasion to the head prompter,—a clever man in his way, but + wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's + meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted, perverted, + and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruel father" [Mr. + Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and indignant, and + tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of the verse. But + somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few of the actors during + the rehearsals chose to continue to misunderstand the text, and never took + the interest in the play which they would have done had Mr. Macready read + it.' + </p> + <p> + Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the widening + perspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare as he + did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred, that her '<i>perfect</i> + behaviour as a woman' and her 'admirable playing as an actress' had been + (or at all events were) to him 'the one gratifying circumstance connected + with it.' + </p> + <p> + He also felt it a just cause of bitterness that the letter from Charles + Dickens,* which conveyed his almost passionate admiration of 'A Blot in + the 'Scutcheon', and was clearly written to Mr. Forster in order that it + might be seen, was withheld for thirty years from his knowledge, and that + of the public whose judgment it might so largely have influenced. Nor was + this the only time in the poet's life that fairly earned honours escaped + him. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * See Forster's 'Life of Dickens'. +</pre> + <p> + 'Colombe's Birthday' was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;* and + afterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit, who + created the principal part. It was again performed for the Browning + Society in 1885,** and although Miss Alma Murray, as Colombe, was almost + entirely supported by amateurs, the result fully justified Miss Mary + Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter) in writing immediately afterwards + in the Boston 'Literary World':*** + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston. + + ** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning + Society, and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King, + in January 1882. + + *** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons' + 'Introduction to the Study of Browning'. +</pre> + <p> + '"Colombe's Birthday" is charming on the boards, clearer, more direct in + action, more full of delicate surprises than one imagines it in print. + With a very little cutting it could be made an excellent acting play.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting, and + alludes in his 'Personalia' to the greatly increased knowledge of the + stage which its minute directions displayed. They told also of sad + experience in the sacrifice of the poet which the play-writer so often + exacts: since they included the proviso that unless a very good Valence + could be found, a certain speech of his should be left out. That speech is + very important to the poetic, and not less to the moral, purpose of the + play: the triumph of unworldly affections. It is that in which Valence + defies the platitudes so often launched against rank and power, and shows + that these may be very beautiful things—in which he pleads for his + rival, and against his own heart. He is the better man of the two, and + Colombe has fallen genuinely in love with him. But the instincts of + sovereignty are not outgrown in one day however eventful, and the young + duchess has shown herself amply endowed with them. The Prince's offer + promised much, and it held still more. The time may come when she will + need that crowning memory of her husband's unselfishness and truth, not to + regret what she has done. + </p> + <p> + 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The Return of the Druses' are both + admitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage; + and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted to + witnessing the revival of 'Strafford' or 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', from + neither of which the best amateur performance could remove the stigma of + past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friend belonging to the + Browning Society told him she had been seriously occupied with the + possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assented to the idea with a + simplicity that was almost touching, 'It <i>was</i> written for the + stage,' he said, 'and has only one scene.' He knew, however, that the + single scene was far from obviating all the difficulties of the case, and + that the Society, with its limited means, did the best it could. + </p> + <p> + I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in 'King Victor and King Charles' + which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, revealing + as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while its occasion + lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, the frequent + hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in which Polixena, the wife + of Charles, entreats him for <i>duty's</i> sake to retain the crown, + though he will earn, by so doing, neither the credit of a virtuous deed + nor the sure, persistent consciousness of having performed one. + </p> + <p> + Four poems of the 'Dramatic Lyrics' had appeared, as I have said, in the + 'Monthly Repository'. Six of those included in the 'Dramatic Lyrics and + Romances' were first published in 'Hood's Magazine' from June 1844 to + April 1845, a month before Hood's death. These poems were, 'The + Laboratory', 'Claret and Tokay', 'Garden Fancies', 'The Boy and the + Angel', 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's', and 'The Flight of the Duchess'. Mr. + Hood's health had given way under stress of work, and Mr. Browning with + other friends thus came forward to help him. The fact deserves remembering + in connection with his subsequent unbroken rule never to write for + magazines. He might always have made exceptions for friendly or + philanthropic objects; the appearance of 'Herve Riel' in the 'Cornhill + Magazine', 1870, indeed proves that it was so. But the offer of a blank + cheque would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to this concession, + as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literary purpose. + </p> + <p> + 'In a Gondola' grew out of a single verse extemporized for a picture by + Maclise, in what circumstances we shall hear in the poet's own words. + </p> + <p> + The first proof of 'Artemis Prologuizes' had the following note: + </p> + <p> + 'I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained of a + tragedy I composed, much against my endeavour, while in bed with a fever + two years ago—it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and + Aricia; but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once, I soon + forgot the remainder.'* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for + the 'Handbook', he spoke as if his illness had interrupted + the work, not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I + think, the more striking. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Browning would have been very angry with himself if he had known he + ever wrote 'I <i>had</i> better'; and the punctuation of this note, as + well as of every other unrevised specimen which we possess of his early + writing, helps to show by what careful study of the literary art he must + have acquired his subsequent mastery of it. + </p> + <p> + 'Cristina' was addressed in fancy to the Spanish queen. It is to be + regretted that the poem did not remain under its original heading of + 'Queen Worship': as this gave a practical clue to the nature of the love + described, and the special remoteness of its object. + </p> + <p> + 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and another poem were written in May 1842 for + Mr. Macready's little eldest son, Willy, who was confined to the house by + illness, and who was to amuse himself by illustrating the poems as well as + reading them;* and the first of these, though not intended for + publication, was added to the 'Dramatic Lyrics', because some columns of + that number of 'Bells and Pomegranates' still required filling. It is + perhaps not known that the second was 'Crescentius, the Pope's Legate': + now included in 'Asolando'. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Miss Browning has lately found some of the illustrations, + and the touching childish letter together with which + her brother received them. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Browning's father had himself begun a rhymed story on the subject of + 'The Pied Piper'; but left it unfinished when he discovered that his son + was writing one. The fragment survives as part of a letter addressed to + Mr. Thomas Powell, and which I have referred to as in the possession of + Mr. Dykes Campbell. + </p> + <p> + 'The Lost Leader' has given rise to periodical questionings continued + until the present day, as to the person indicated in its title. Mr. + Browning answered or anticipated them fifteen years ago in a letter to + Miss Lee, of West Peckham, Maidstone. It was his reply to an application + in verse made to him in their very young days by herself and two other + members of her family, the manner of which seems to have unusually pleased + him. + </p> + <p> + Villers-sur-mer, Calvados, France: September 7, '75. + </p> + <p> + Dear Friends,—Your letter has made a round to reach me—hence + the delay in replying to it—which you will therefore pardon. I have + been asked the question you put to me—tho' never asked so poetically + and so pleasantly—I suppose a score of times: and I can only answer, + with something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth + in my mind—but simply as 'a model'; you know, an artist takes one or + two striking traits in the features of his 'model', and uses them to start + his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good man or woman + who happens to be 'sitting' for nose and eye. + </p> + <p> + I thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism, at an unlucky + juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But—once + call my fancy-portrait 'Wordsworth'—and how much more ought one to + say,—how much more would not I have attempted to say! + </p> + <p> + There is my apology, dear friends, and your acceptance of it will confirm + me Truly yours, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + Some fragments of correspondence, not all very interesting, and his own + allusion to an attack of illness, are our only record of the poet's + general life during the interval which separated the publication of 'Pippa + Passes' from his second Italian journey. + </p> + <p> + An undated letter to Miss Haworth probably refers to the close of 1841. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I am getting to love painting as I did once. Do you know I was a + young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing? My father + had faith in me, and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies, I well know, a + certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil and black currant jam-juice + (paint being rank poison, as they said when I sucked my brushes) with his + (my father's) note in one corner, "R. B., aetat. two years three months." + "How fast, alas, our days we spend—How vain they be, how soon they + end!" I am going to print "Victor", however, by February, and there is one + thing not so badly painted in there—oh, let me tell you. I chanced + to call on Forster the other day, and he pressed me into committing verse + on the instant, not the minute, in Maclise's behalf, who has wrought a + divine Venetian work, it seems, for the British Institution. Forster + described it well—but I could do nothing better, than this wooden + ware—(all the "properties", as we say, were given, and the problem + was how to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason). + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I send my heart up to thee, all my heart + In this my singing! + For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; + The very night is clinging + Closer to Venice' streets to leave me space + Above me, whence thy face + May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place. +</pre> + <p> + Singing and stars and night and Venice streets and joyous heart, are + properties, do you please to see. And now tell me, is this below the + average of catalogue original poetry? Tell me—for to that end of + being told, I write. . . . I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch + me calling people "dear" in a hurry, except in letter-beginnings!) + yesterday. I don't know any people like them. There was a son of Burns + there, Major Burns whom Macready knows—he sung "Of all the airts", + "John Anderson", and another song of his father's. . . .' + </p> + <p> + In the course of 1842 he wrote the following note to Miss Flower, + evidently relating to the publication of her 'Hymns and Anthems'. + </p> + <p> + New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey: Tuesday morning. + </p> + <p> + Dear Miss Flower,—I am sorry for what must grieve Mr. Fox; for + myself, I beg him earnestly not to see me till his entire convenience, + however pleased I shall be to receive the letter you promise on his part. + </p> + <p> + And how can I thank you enough for this good news—all this music I + shall be so thoroughly gratified to hear? Ever yours faithfully, Robert + Browning. + </p> + <p> + His last letter to her was written in 1845; the subject being a concert of + her own sacred music which she was about to give; and again, although more + slightly, I anticipate the course of events, in order to give it in its + natural connection with the present one. Mr. Browning was now engaged to + be married, and the last ring of youthful levity had disappeared from his + tone; but neither the new happiness nor the new responsibility had + weakened his interest in his boyhood's friend. Miss Flower must then have + been slowly dying, and the closing words of the letter have the solemnity + of a last farewell. + </p> + <p> + Sunday. + </p> + <p> + Dear Miss Flower,—I was very foolishly surprized at the sorrowful + finical notice you mention: foolishly; for, God help us, how else is it + with all critics of everything—don't I hear them talk and see them + write? I dare-say he admires you as he said. + </p> + <p> + For me, I never had another feeling than entire admiration for your music—entire + admiration—I put it apart from all other English music I know, and + fully believe in it as <i>the</i> music we all waited for. + </p> + <p> + Of your health I shall not trust myself to speak: you must know what is + unspoken. I should have been most happy to see you if but for a minute—and + if next Wednesday, I might take your hand for a moment.— + </p> + <p> + But you would concede that, if it were right, remembering what is now very + old friendship. May God bless you for ever (The signature has been cut + off.) + </p> + <p> + In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship, it is + believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance of a young + Neapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris; and they + became such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together. Mr. Scotti + was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged their conveyance, + and did all such bargaining in their joint interest as the habits of his + country required. 'As I write,' Mr. Browning said in a letter to his + sister, 'I hear him disputing our bill in the next room. He does not see + why we should pay for six wax candles when we have used only two.' At Rome + they spent most of their evenings with an old acquaintance of Mr. + Browning's, then Countess Carducci, and she pronounced Mr. Scotti the + handsomest man she had ever seen. He certainly bore no appearance of being + the least prosperous. But he blew out his brains soon after he and his new + friend had parted; and I do not think the act was ever fully accounted + for. + </p> + <p> + It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went to Leghorn + to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter of introduction. + He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. Val Prinsep, but chiefly + in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr. Trelawney had displayed + during its course. A surgeon was occupied all the time in probing his leg + for a bullet which had been lodged there some years before, and had lately + made itself felt; and he showed himself absolutely indifferent to the pain + of the operation. Mr. Browning's main object in paying the visit had been, + naturally, to speak with one who had known Byron and been the last to see + Shelley alive; but we only hear of the two poets that they formed in part + the subject of their conversation. He reached England, again, we suppose, + through Germany—since he avoided Paris as before. + </p> + <p> + It has been asserted by persons otherwise well informed, that on this, if + not on his previous Italian journey, Mr. Browning became acquainted with + Stendhal, then French Consul at Civita Vecchia, and that he imbibed from + the great novelist a taste for curiosities of Italian family history, + which ultimately led him in the direction of the Franceschini case. It is + certain that he profoundly admired this writer, and if he was not, at some + time or other, introduced to him it was because the opportunity did not + occur. But there is abundant evidence that no introduction took place, and + quite sufficient proof that none was possible. Stendhal died in Paris in + March 1842; and granting that he was at Civita Vecchia when the poet made + his earlier voyage—no certainty even while he held the appointment—the + ship cannot have touched there on its way to Trieste. It is also a mistake + to suppose that Mr. Browning was specially interested in ancient + chronicles, as such. This was one of the points on which he distinctly + differed from his father. He took his dramatic subjects wherever he found + them, and any historical research which they ultimately involved was + undertaken for purposes of verification. 'Sordello' alone may have been + conceived on a rather different plan, and I have no authority whatever for + admitting that it was so. The discovery of the record of the Franceschini + case was, as its author has everywhere declared, an accident. + </p> + <p> + A single relic exists for us of this visit to the South—a shell + picked up, according to its inscription, on one of the Syren Isles, + October 4, 1844; but many of its reminiscences are embodied in that vivid + and charming picture 'The Englishman in Italy', which appeared in the + 'Bells and Pomegranates' number for the following year. Naples always + remained a bright spot in the poet's memory; and if it had been, like + Asolo, his first experience of Italy, it must have drawn him in later + years the more powerfully of the two. At one period, indeed, he dreamed of + it as a home for his declining days. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 9 + </h2> + <h3> + 1844-1849 + </h3> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p> + Introduction to Miss Barrett—Engagement—Motives for Secrecy—Marriage—Journey + to Italy—Extract of Letter from Mr. Fox—Mrs. Browning's + Letters to Miss Mitford—Life at Pisa—Vallombrosa—Florence; + Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle—Proposed British Mission to the Vatican—Father + Prout—Palazzo Guidi—Fano; Ancona—'A Blot in the + 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. + </p> + <p> + During his recent intercourse with the Browning family Mr. Kenyon had + often spoken of his invalid cousin, Elizabeth Barrett,* and had given them + copies of her works; and when the poet returned to England, late in 1844, + he saw the volume containing 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship', which had + appeared during his absence. On hearing him express his admiration of it, + Mr. Kenyon begged him to write to Miss Barrett, and himself tell her how + the poems had impressed him; 'for,' he added, 'my cousin is a great + invalid, and sees no one, but great souls jump at sympathy.' Mr. Browning + did write, and, a few months, probably, after the correspondence had been + established, begged to be allowed to visit her. She at first refused this, + on the score of her delicate health and habitual seclusion, emphasizing + the refusal by words of such touching humility and resignation that I + cannot refrain from quoting them. 'There is nothing to see in me, nothing + to hear in me. I am a weed fit for the ground and darkness.' But her + objections were overcome, and their first interview sealed Mr. Browning's + fate. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Properly E. Barrett Moulton-Barrett. The first of these + surnames was that originally borne by the family, but + dropped on the annexation of the second. It has now for + some years been resumed. +</pre> + <p> + There is no cause for surprize in the passionate admiration with which + Miss Barrett so instantly inspired him. To begin with, he was heart-whole. + It would be too much to affirm that, in the course of his thirty-two + years, he had never met with a woman whom he could entirely love; but if + he had, it was not under circumstances which favoured the growth of such a + feeling. She whom he now saw for the first time had long been to him one + of the greatest of living poets; she was learned as women seldom were in + those days. It must have been apparent, in the most fugitive contact, that + her moral nature was as exquisite as her mind was exceptional. She looked + much younger than her age, which he only recently knew to have been six + years beyond his own; and her face was filled with beauty by the large, + expressive eyes. The imprisoned love within her must unconsciously have + leapt to meet his own. It would have been only natural that he should grow + into the determination to devote his life to hers, or be swept into an + offer of marriage by a sudden impulse which his after-judgment would + condemn. Neither of these things occurred. The offer was indeed made under + a sudden and overmastering impulse. But it was persistently repeated, till + it had obtained a conditional assent. No sane man in Mr. Browning's + position could have been ignorant of the responsibilities he was + incurring. He had, it is true, no experience of illness. Of its nature, + its treatment, its symptoms direct and indirect, he remained pathetically + ignorant to his dying day. He did not know what disqualifications for + active existence might reside in the fragile, recumbent form, nor in the + long years lived without change of air or scene beyond the passage, not + always even allowed, from bed-room to sitting-room, from sofa to bed + again. But he did know that Miss Barrett received him lying down, and that + his very ignorance of her condition left him without security for her ever + being able to stand. A strong sense of sympathy and pity could alone + entirely justify or explain his act—a strong desire to bring + sunshine into that darkened life. We might be sure that these motives had + been present with him if we had no direct authority for believing it; and + we have this authority in his own comparatively recent words: 'She had so + much need of care and protection. There was so much pity in what I felt + for her!' The pity was, it need hardly be said, at no time a substitute + for love, though the love in its full force only developed itself later; + but it supplied an additional incentive. + </p> + <p> + Miss Barrett had made her acceptance of Mr. Browning's proposal contingent + on her improving in health. The outlook was therefore vague. But under the + influence of this great new happiness she did gain some degree of + strength. They saw each other three times a week; they exchanged letters + constantly, and a very deep and perfect understanding established itself + between them. Mr. Browning never mentioned his visits except to his own + family, because it was naturally feared that if Miss Barrett were known to + receive one person, other friends, or even acquaintances, would claim + admittance to her; and Mr. Kenyon, who was greatly pleased by the result + of his introduction, kept silence for the same reason. + </p> + <p> + In this way the months slipped by till the summer of 1846 was drawing to + its close, and Miss Barrett's doctor then announced that her only chance + of even comparative recovery lay in spending the coming winter in the + South. There was no rational obstacle to her acting on this advice, since + more than one of her brothers was willing to escort her; but Mr. Barrett, + while surrounding his daughter with every possible comfort, had resigned + himself to her invalid condition and expected her also to acquiesce in it. + He probably did not believe that she would benefit by the proposed change. + At any rate he refused his consent to it. There remained to her only one + alternative—to break with the old home and travel southwards as Mr. + Browning's wife. + </p> + <p> + When she had finally assented to this course, she took a preparatory step + which, in so far as it was known, must itself have been sufficiently + startling to those about her: she drove to Regent's Park, and when there, + stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I do not know how long + she stood—probably only for a moment; but I well remember hearing + that when, after so long an interval, she felt earth under her feet and + air about her, the sensation was almost bewilderingly strange. + </p> + <p> + They were married, with strict privacy, on September 12, 1846, at St. + Pancras Church. + </p> + <p> + The engaged pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett's sanction to their + marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestine + character thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise than repugnant + to Mr. Browning's pride; but it was dictated by the deepest filial + affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be no question in + so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness with that of the + man she loved; she was determined to give herself to him. But she knew + that her father would never consent to her doing so; and she preferred + marrying without his knowledge to acting in defiance of a prohibition + which, once issued, he would never have revoked, and which would have + weighed like a portent of evil upon her. She even kept the secret of her + engagement from her intimate friend Miss Mitford, and her second father, + Mr. Kenyon, that they might not be involved in its responsibility. And Mr. + Kenyon, who, probably of all her circle, best understood the case, was + grateful to her for this consideration. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Barrett was one of those men who will not part with their children; + who will do anything for them except allow them to leave the parental + home. We have all known fathers of this type. He had nothing to urge + against Robert Browning. When Mr. Kenyon, later, said to him that he could + not understand his hostility to the marriage, since there was no man in + the world to whom he would more gladly have given his daughter if he had + been so fortunate as to possess one,* he replied: 'I have no objection to + the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking of another + world;' and, given his conviction that Miss Barrett's state was hopeless, + some allowance must be made for the angered sense of fitness which her + elopement was calculated to arouse in him. But his attitude was the same, + under the varying circumstances, with all his daughters and sons alike. + There was no possible husband or wife whom he would cordially have + accepted for one of them. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Kenyon had been twice married, but he had no children. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Browning had been willing, even at that somewhat late age, to study + for the Bar, or accept, if he could obtain it, any other employment which + might render him less ineligible from a pecuniary point of view. But Miss + Barrett refused to hear of such a course; and the subsequent necessity for + her leaving England would have rendered it useless. + </p> + <p> + For some days after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Browning returned to their + old life. He justly thought that the agitation of the ceremony had been, + for the moment, as much as she could endure, and had therefore fixed for + it a day prior by one week to that of their intended departure from + England. The only difference in their habits was that he did not see her; + he recoiled from the hypocrisy of asking for her under her maiden name; + and during this passive interval, fortunately short, he carried a weight + of anxiety and of depression which placed it among the most painful + periods of his existence. + </p> + <p> + In the late afternoon or evening of September 19, Mrs. Browning, attended + by her maid and her dog, stole away from her father's house. The family + were at dinner, at which meal she was not in the habit of joining them; + her sisters Henrietta and Arabel had been throughout in the secret of her + attachment and in full sympathy with it; in the case of the servants, she + was also sure of friendly connivance. There was no difficulty in her + escape, but that created by the dog, which might be expected to bark its + consciousness of the unusual situation. She took him into her confidence. + She said: 'O Flush, if you make a sound, I am lost.' And Flush understood, + as what good dog would not?—and crept after his mistress in silence. + I do not remember where her husband joined her; we may be sure it was as + near her home as possible. That night they took the boat to Havre, on + their way to Paris. + </p> + <p> + Only a short time elapsed before Mr. Barrett became aware of what had + happened. It is not necessary to dwell on his indignation, which at that + moment, I believe, was shared by all his sons. Nor were they the only + persons to be agitated by the occurrence. If there was wrath in the + Barrett family, there was consternation in that of Mr. Browning. He had + committed a crime in the eyes of his wife's father; but he had been + guilty, in the judgment of his own parents, of one of those errors which + are worse. A hundred times the possible advantages of marrying a Miss + Barrett could never have balanced for them the risks and dangers he had + incurred in wresting to himself the guardianship of that frail life which + might perish in his hands, leaving him to be accused of having destroyed + it; and they must have awaited the event with feelings never to be + forgotten. + </p> + <p> + It was soon to be apparent that in breaking the chains which bound her to + a sick room, Mr. Browning had not killed his wife, but was giving her a + new lease of existence. His parents and sister soon loved her dearly, for + her own sake as well as her husband's; and those who, if in a mistaken + manner, had hitherto cherished her, gradually learned, with one exception, + to value him for hers. It would, however, be useless to deny that the + marriage was a hazardous experiment, involving risks of suffering quite + other than those connected with Mrs. Browning's safety: the latent + practical disparities of an essentially vigorous and an essentially + fragile existence; and the time came when these were to make themselves + felt. Mrs. Browning had been a delicate infant. She had also outgrown this + delicacy and developed into a merry, and, in the harmless sense, + mischief-loving child. The accident which subsequently undermined her life + could only have befallen a very active and healthy girl.* Her condition + justified hope and, to a great extent, fulfilled it. She rallied + surprisingly and almost suddenly in the sunshine of her new life, and + remained for several years at the higher physical level: her natural and + now revived spirits sometimes, I imagine, lifting her beyond it. But her + ailments were too radical for permanent cure, as the weak voice and + shrunken form never ceased to attest. They renewed themselves, though in + slightly different conditions; and she gradually relapsed, during the + winters at least, into something like the home-bound condition of her + earlier days. It became impossible that she should share the more active + side of her husband's existence. It had to be alternately suppressed and + carried on without her. The deep heart-love, the many-sided intellectual + sympathy, preserved their union in rare beauty to the end. But to say that + it thus maintained itself as if by magic, without effort of self-sacrifice + on his part or of resignation on hers, would be as unjust to the noble + qualities of both, as it would be false to assert that its compensating + happiness had ever failed them. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Her family at that time lived in the country. She was a + constant rider, and fond of saddling her pony; and one day, + when she was about fourteen, she overbalanced herself in + lifting the saddle, and fell backward, inflicting injuries + on her head, or rather spine, which caused her great + suffering, but of which the nature remained for some time + undiscovered. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Browning's troubles did not, even for the present, exhaust themselves + in that week of apprehension. They assumed a deeper reality when his + delicate wife first gave herself into his keeping, and the long hours on + steamboat and in diligence were before them. What she suffered in body, + and he in mind, during the first days of that wedding-journey is better + imagined than told. In Paris they either met, or were joined by, a friend, + Mrs. Anna Jameson (then also en route for Italy), and Mrs. Browning was + doubly cared for till she and her husband could once more put themselves + on their way. At Genoa came the long-needed rest in southern land. From + thence, in a few days, they went on to Pisa, and settled there for the + winter. + </p> + <p> + Even so great a friend as John Forster was not in the secret of Mr. + Browning's marriage; we learn this through an amusing paragraph in a + letter from Mr. Fox, written soon after it had taken place: + </p> + <p> + 'Forster never heard of the Browning marriage till the proof of the + newspaper ('Examiner') notice was sent; when he went into one of his great + passions at the supposed hoax, ordered up the compositor to have a swear + at him, and demanded to see the MS. from which it was taken: so it was + brought, and he instantly recognised the hand of Browning's sister. Next + day came a letter from R. B., saying he had often meant to tell him or + write of it, but hesitated between the two, and neglected both. + </p> + <p> + 'She was better, and a winter in Italy had been recommended some months + ago. + </p> + <p> + 'It seems as if made up by their poetry rather than themselves.' + </p> + <p> + Many interesting external details of Mr. Browning's married life must have + been lost to us through the wholesale destruction of his letters to his + family, of which mention has been already made, and which he carried out + before leaving Warwick Crescent about four years ago; and Mrs. Browning's + part in the correspondence, though still preserved, cannot fill the gap, + since for a long time it chiefly consisted of little personal outpourings, + inclosed in her husband's letters and supplementary to them. But she also + wrote constantly to Miss Mitford; and, from the letters addressed to her, + now fortunately in Mr. Barrett Browning's hands, it has been possible to + extract many passages of a sufficiently great, and not too private, + interest for our purpose. These extracts—in some cases almost entire + letters—indeed constitute a fairly complete record of Mr. and Mrs. + Browning's joint life till the summer of 1854, when Miss Mitford's death + was drawing near, and the correspondence ceased. Their chronological order + is not always certain, because Mrs. Browning never gave the year in which + her letters were written, and in some cases the postmark is obliterated; + but the missing date can almost always be gathered from their contents. + The first letter is probably written from Paris. + </p> + <p> + Oct. 2 ('46). + </p> + <p> + '. . . and he, as you say, had done everything for me—he loved me + for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself—loved me heart to + heart persistently—in spite of my own will . . . drawn me back to + life and hope again when I had done with both. My life seemed to belong to + him and to none other, at last, and I had no power to speak a word. Have + faith in me, my dearest friend, till you know him. The intellect is so + little in comparison to all the rest—to the womanly tenderness, the + inexhaustible goodness, the high and noble aspiration of every hour. + Temper, spirits, manners—there is not a flaw anywhere. I shut my + eyes sometimes and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel. Only, if it + had been a dream, the pain of some parts of it would have wakened me + before now—it is not a dream. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The three next speak for themselves. + </p> + <p> + Pisa: ('46). + </p> + <p> + '. . . For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full of beauty and + repose,—and the purple mountains gloriously seem to beckon us on + deeper into the vine land. We have rooms close to the Duomo, and leaning + down on the great Collegio built by Facini. Three excellent bed-rooms and + a sitting-room matted and carpeted, looking comfortable even for England. + For the last fortnight, except the last few sunny days, we have had rain; + but the climate is as mild as possible, no cold with all the damp. + Delightful weather we had for the travelling. Mrs. Jameson says she won't + call me improved but transformed rather. . . . I mean to know something + about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get him to open my eyes + for me with a little instruction—in this place are to be seen the + first steps of Art. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Pisa: Dec. 19 ('46). + </p> + <p> + '. . . Within these three or four days we have had frost—yes, and a + little snow—for the first time, say the Pisans, within five years. + Robert says the mountains are powdered towards Lucca. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Feb. 3 ('47). + </p> + <p> + '. . . Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of his books, + but certainly he does not in a general way appreciate our French people + quite with my warmth. He takes too high a standard, I tell him, and won't + listen to a story for a story's sake—I can bear, you know, to be + amused without a strong pull on my admiration. So we have great wars + sometimes—I put up Dumas' flag or Soulie's or Eugene Sue's (yet he + was properly impressed by the 'Mysteres de Paris'), and carry it till my + arms ache. The plays and vaudevilles he knows far more of than I do, and + always maintains they are the happiest growth of the French school. + Setting aside the 'masters', observe; for Balzac and George Sand hold all + their honours. Then we read together the other day 'Rouge et Noir', that + powerful work of Stendhal's, and he observed that it was exactly like + Balzac 'in the raw'—in the material and undeveloped conception . . . + We leave Pisa in April, and pass through Florence towards the north of + Italy . . .' + </p> + <p> + (She writes out a long list of the 'Comedie Humaine' for Miss Mitford.) + </p> + <p> + Mr. and Mrs. Browning must have remained in Florence, instead of merely + passing through it; this is proved by the contents of the two following + letters: + </p> + <p> + Aug. 20 ('47). + </p> + <p> + '. . . We have spent one of the most delightful of summers notwithstanding + the heat, and I begin to comprehend the possibility of St. Lawrence's + ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot certainly it has been and is, yet + there have been cool intermissions, and as we have spacious and airy + rooms, as Robert lets me sit all day in my white dressing-gown without a + single masculine criticism, and as we can step out of the window on a sort + of balcony terrace which is quite private, and swims over with moonlight + in the evenings, and as we live upon water-melons and iced water and figs + and all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience. + </p> + <p> + We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them for two + months, but the new abbot said or implied that Wilson and I stank in his + nostrils, being women. So we were sent away at the end of five days. So + provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a sea of hills looking alive + among the clouds—which rolled, it was difficult to discern. Such + fine woods, supernaturally silent, with the ground black as ink. There + were eagles there too, and there was no road. Robert went on horseback, + and Wilson and I were drawn on a sledge—(i.e. an old hamper, a + basket wine-hamper—without a wheel) by two white bullocks, up the + precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in those wild places at four + o'clock in the morning! a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an + ecstasy of admiration. It was a sight to see before one died and went away + into another world. But being expelled ignominiously at the end of five + days, we had to come back to Florence to find a new apartment cooler than + the old, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon, and dear Mr. Kenyon does not come + after all. And on the 20th of September we take up our knapsacks and turn + our faces towards Rome, creeping slowly along, with a pause at Arezzo, and + a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni. Then we plan to + take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian rock, and enjoy Rome + as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. This Florence is + unspeakably beautiful . . .' + </p> + <p> + Oct. ('47). + </p> + <p> + '. . . Very few acquaintances have we made in Florence, and very quietly + lived out our days. Mr. Powers, the sculptor, is our chief friend and + favourite. A most charming, simple, straightforward, genial American—as + simple as the man of genius he has proved himself to be. He sometimes + comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much. The sculptor + has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light—you would + scarcely marvel if they clove the marble without the help of his hands. We + have seen, besides, the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at Venice; and Miss + Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, an authoress and poetess on her own + account, having been introduced to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has + hunted us out, and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with + sparkling talk enough . . .' + </p> + <p> + In this year, 1847, the question arose of a British mission to the + Vatican; and Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Monckton Milnes begging him to + signify to the Foreign Office his more than willingness to take part in + it. He would be glad and proud, he said, to be secretary to such an + embassy, and to work like a horse in his vocation. The letter is given in + the lately published biography of Lord Houghton, and I am obliged to + confess that it has been my first intimation of the fact recorded there. + When once his 'Paracelsus' had appeared, and Mr. Browning had taken rank + as a poet, he renounced all idea of more active work; and the tone and + habits of his early married life would have seemed scarcely consistent + with a renewed impulse towards it. But the fact was in some sense due to + the very circumstances of that life: among them, his wife's probable + incitement to, and certain sympathy with, the proceeding. + </p> + <p> + The projected winter in Rome had been given up, I believe against the + doctor's advice, on the strength of the greater attractions of Florence. + Our next extract is dated from thence, Dec. 8, 1847. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Think what we have done since I last wrote to you. Taken two + houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the + contract. You will set it down to excellent poet's work in the way of + domestic economy, but the fault was altogether mine, as usual. My husband, + to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased with three days + through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequence was that we + had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go away ourselves—any + alternative being preferable to a return of illness—and I am sure I + should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. You can + scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. So + away we came into the blaze of him in the Piazza Pitti; precisely opposite + the Grand Duke's palace; I with my remorse, and poor Robert without a + single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the angels, would have + stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing—but as + to <i>his</i> being angry with <i>me</i> for any cause except not eating + enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are + in the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning + till evening, and most days I am able to get out into the piazza and walk + up and down for twenty minutes without feeling a breath of the actual + winter . . . and Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at night, at nine + o'clock, to catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet + at our fire—and a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of + talent and accomplishment never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing + she is too, and original; and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make + between them. And this is nearly all we see of the Face Divine—I + can't make Robert go out a single evening. . . .' + </p> + <p> + We have five extracts for 1848. One of these, not otherwise dated, + describes an attack of sore-throat which was fortunately Mr. Browning's + last; and the letter containing it must have been written in the course of + the summer. + </p> + <p> + '. . . My husband was laid up for nearly a month with fever and relaxed + sore-throat. Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands and + languid eyes—the only unhappiness I ever had by him. And then he + wouldn't see a physician, and if it had not been that just at the right + moment Mr. Mahoney, the celebrated Jesuit, and "Father Prout" of Fraser, + knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us on his + way to Rome, pointed out to us that the fever got ahead through weakness, + and mixed up with his own kind hand a potion of eggs and port wine; to the + horror of our Italian servant, who lifted up his eyes at such a + prescription for fever, crying, "O Inglesi! Inglesi!" the case would have + been far worse, I have no kind of doubt, for the eccentric prescription + gave the power of sleeping, and the pulse grew quieter directly. I shall + always be grateful to Father Prout—always.'* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * It had not been merely a case of relaxed sore-throat. + There was an abscess, which burst during this first night of + sleep. +</pre> + <p> + May 28. + </p> + <p> + '. . . And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last, + little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was, to get to England as + much in summer as possible, the expense of the intermediate journeys + making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case, it + appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our way of + taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment and furnish it would + leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of the first year in + exchange for our outlay, and all but a free residence afterwards, the + cheapness of furniture being quite fabulous at the present crisis. . . . + In fact we have really done it magnificently, and planted ourselves in the + Guidi Palace in the favourite suite of the last Count (his arms are in + scagliola on the floor of my bedroom). Though we have six beautiful rooms + and a kitchen, three of them quite palace rooms and opening on a terrace, + and though such furniture as comes by slow degrees into them is antique + and worthy of the place, we yet shall have saved money by the end of this + year. . . . Now I tell you all this lest you should hear dreadful rumours + of our having forsaken our native land, venerable institutions and all, + whereas we remember it so well (it's a dear land in many senses), that we + have done this thing chiefly in order to make sure of getting back + comfortably, . . . a stone's throw, too, it is from the Pitti, and really + in my present mind I would hardly exchange with the Grand Duke himself. By + the bye, as to street, we have no spectators in windows in just the grey + wall of a church called San Felice for good omen. + </p> + <p> + 'Now, have you heard enough of us? What I claimed first, in way of + privilege, was a spring-sofa to loll upon, and a supply of rain water to + wash in, and you shall see what a picturesque oil-jar they have given us + for the latter purpose; it would just hold the Captain of the Forty + Thieves. As for the chairs and tables, I yield the more especial interest + in them to Robert; only you would laugh to hear us correct one another + sometimes. "Dear, you get too many drawers, and not enough washing-stands. + Pray don't let us have any more drawers when we've nothing more to put in + them." There was no division on the necessity of having six spoons—some + questions passed themselves. . . .' + </p> + <p> + July. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I am quite well again and strong. Robert and I go out often after + tea in a wandering walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, + better still, at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold + under the bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, we are + happier than ever. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Aug. + </p> + <p> + '. . . As for ourselves we have hardly done so well—yet well—having + enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent us + to Fano as "a delightful summer residence for an English family," and we + found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched into paleness, + the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of the inhabitants + sufficiently corroborative of their words that no drop of rain or dew ever + falls there during the summer. A "circulating library" which "does not + give out books," and "a refined and intellectual Italian society" (I quote + Murray for that phrase) which "never reads a book through" (I quote Mrs. + Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's mother, who has lived in Fano seven years) complete + the advantages of the place. Yet the churches are very beautiful, and a + divine picture of Guercino's is worth going all that way to see. . . . We + fled from Fano after three days, and finding ourselves cheated out of our + dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what the + Italians call "un bel giro". So we went to Ancona—a striking sea + city, holding up against the brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple + tides—beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself you + would call the houses that seem to grow there—so identical is the + colour and character. I should like to visit Ancona again when there is a + little air and shadow. We stayed a week, as it was, living upon fish and + cold water. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The one dated Florence, December 16, is interesting with reference to Mr. + Browning's attitude when he wrote the letters to Mr. Frank Hill which I + have recently quoted. + </p> + <p> + 'We have been, at least I have been, a little anxious lately about the + fate of the 'Blot in the 'Scutcheon' which Mr. Phelps applied for my + husband's permission to revive at Sadler's. Of course putting the request + was mere form, as he had every right to act the play—only it made ME + anxious till we heard the result—and we both of us are very grateful + to dear Mr. Chorley, who not only made it his business to be at the + theatre the first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend + to give us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a more + legitimate success. The play went straight to the hearts of the audience, + it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage, from the papers. + You may remember, or may not have heard, how Macready brought it out and + put his foot on it, in the flush of a quarrel between manager and author; + and Phelps, knowing the whole secret and feeling the power of the play, + determined on making a revival of it in his own theatre. Mr. Chorley + called his acting "fine". . . .' + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 10 + </h2> + <h3> + 1849-1852 + </h3> + <p> + Death of Mr. Browning's Mother—Birth of his Son—Mrs. + Browning's Letters continued—Baths of Lucca—Florence again—Venice—Margaret + Fuller Ossoli—Visit to England—Winter in Paris—Carlyle—George + Sand—Alfred de Musset. + </p> + <p> + On March 9, 1849, Mr. Browning's son was born. With the joy of his wife's + deliverance from the dangers of such an event came also his first great + sorrow. His mother did not live to receive the news of her grandchild's + birth. The letter which conveyed it found her still breathing, but in the + unconsciousness of approaching death. There had been no time for warning. + The sister could only break the suddenness of the shock. A letter of Mrs. + Browning's tells what was to be told. + </p> + <p> + Florence: April 30 ('49). + </p> + <p> + '. . . This is the first packet of letters, except one to Wimpole Street, + which I have written since my confinement. You will have heard how our joy + turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband's mother. An + unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart) terminated in a fatal way—and + she lay in the insensibility precursive of the grave's when the letter + written with such gladness by my poor husband and announcing the birth of + his child, reached her address. "It would have made her heart bound," said + her daughter to us. Poor tender heart—the last throb was too near. + The medical men would not allow the news to be communicated. The next joy + she felt was to be in heaven itself. My husband has been in the deepest + anguish, and indeed, except for the courageous consideration of his sister + who wrote two letters of preparation, saying "She was not well" and she + "was very ill" when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think what + the result would have been to him. He has loved his mother as such + passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down in + an extremity of sorrow—never. Even now, the depression is great—and + sometimes when I leave him alone a little and return to the room, I find + him in tears. I do earnestly wish to change the scene and air—but + where to go? England looks terrible now. He says it would break his heart + to see his mother's roses over the wall and the place where she used to + lay her scissors and gloves—which I understand so thoroughly that I + can't say "Let us go to England." We must wait and see what his father and + sister will choose to do, or choose us to do—for of course a duty + plainly seen would draw us anywhere. My own dearest sisters will be + painfully disappointed by any change of plan—only they are too good + and kind not to understand the difficulty—not to see the motive. So + do you, I am certain. It has been very, very painful altogether, this + drawing together of life and death. Robert was too enraptured at my safety + and with his little son, and the sudden reaction was terrible. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Bagni di Lucca. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We have been wandering in search of cool air and a cool bough among + all the olive trees to build our summer nest on. My husband has been + suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to, in consequence of the + great mental shock of last March—loss of appetite, loss of sleep—looks + quite worn and altered. His spirits never rallied except with an effort, + and every letter from New Cross threw him back into deep depression. I was + very anxious, and feared much that the end of it all would be (the intense + heat of Florence assisting) nervous fever or something similar; and I had + the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence for a month or + two. He who generally delights in travelling, had no mind for change or + movement. I had to say and swear that Baby and I couldn't bear the heat, + and that we must and would go away. "Ce que femme veut, <i>homme</i> + veut," if the latter is at all amiable, or the former persevering. At last + I gained the victory. It was agreed that we two should go on an exploring + journey, to find out where we could have most shadow at least expense; and + we left our child with his nurse and Wilson, while we were absent. We went + along the coast to Spezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, + passed through the olive-forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia + trees, chestnut woods, glorious surprises of the most exquisite scenery. I + say olive-forests advisedly—the olive grows like a forest-tree in + those regions, shading the ground with tints of silvery network. The olive + near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise a + little too the Florentine vine, which does not swing such portcullises of + massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole road where + we travelled. Beautiful indeed it was. Spezzia wheels the blue sea into + the arms of the wooded mountains; and we had a glance at Shelley's house + at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of course. I was not sorry that the + lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. We returned on our + steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a + village in the mountains, where rock river and wood enticed us to stay, + and the inhabitants drove us off by their unreasonable prices. It is + curious—but just in proportion to the want of civilization the + prices rise in Italy. If you haven't cups and saucers, you are made to pay + for plate. Well—so finding no rest for the soles of our feet, I + persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to + proceed afterwards to San Marcello, or some safer wilderness. We had both + of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against the Baths of Lucca; + taking them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting + to find everything trodden flat by the continental English—yet, I + wanted to see the place, because it is a place to see, after all. So we + came, and were so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the + coolness of the climate, and the absence of our countrymen—political + troubles serving admirably our private requirements, that we made an offer + for rooms on the spot, and returned to Florence for Baby and the rest of + our establishment without further delay. Here we are then. We have been + here more than a fortnight. We have taken an apartment for the season—four + months, paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able to + stay till the end of October. The living is cheaper than even in Florence, + so that there has been no extravagance in coming here. In fact Florence is + scarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat by day and + night, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. We have + taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place—the highest house of the + highest of the three villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and + which lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by a + rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicale is all + the noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage-wheels cannot vex us, God + be thanked for it! The silence is full of joy and consolation. I think my + husband's spirits are better already, and his appetite improved. Certainly + little Babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. He is out all + day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it that he is + prettier than the whole population of babies here. . . . Then my whole + strength has wonderfully improved—just as my medical friends + prophesied,—and it seems like a dream when I find myself able to + climb the hills with Robert, and help him to lose himself in the forests. + Ever since my confinement I have been growing stronger and stronger, and + where it is to stop I can't tell really. I can do as much or more than at + any point of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of the + place seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: it draws you, + raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness—sheathed + in Italian sunshine—think what that must be! And the beauty and the + solitude—for with a few paces we get free of the habitations of men—all + is delightful to me. What is peculiarly beautiful and wonderful, is the + variety of the shapes of the mountains. They are a multitude—and yet + there is no likeness. None, except where the golden mist comes and + transfigures them into one glory. For the rest, the mountain there wrapt + in the chestnut forest is not like that bare peak which tilts against the + sky—nor like the serpent-twine of another which seems to move and + coil in the moving coiling shadow. . . .' + </p> + <p> + She writes again: + </p> + <p> + Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49). + </p> + <p> + '. . . I have performed a great exploit—ridden on a donkey five + miles deep into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground + not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse + (with Baby) on other donkies,—guides of course. We set off at eight + in the morning, and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain + pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick + colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains + could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, one + could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted + torrents—above and through the chestnut forests precipitous beyond + what you would think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the + ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, + satisfied us wholly, as we looked round on the world of innumerable + mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea—and not a human + habitation. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The following fragment, which I have received quite without date, might + refer to this or to a somewhat later period. + </p> + <p> + 'If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved health, + and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people, of how your + wife walked here with you, and there with you, as if a wife with a pair of + feet was a miracle of nature."' + </p> + <p> + Florence: Feb. 18 ('50). + </p> + <p> + '. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live, and + how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here. + Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Florence: April 1 ('50). + </p> + <p> + '. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, just sweeping + through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello looked out to + see the Duke go by—and just such a door where Tasso stood and where + Dante drew his chair out to sit. Strange to have all that old world life + about us, and the blue sky so bright. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Venice: June 4 (probably '50). + </p> + <p> + '. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice. + The Heaven of it is ineffable—never had I touched the skirts of so + celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of + water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting + silence, the music, the gondolas—I mix it all up together and + maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice + in the world. + </p> + <p> + 'Do you know when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. But now + comes the earth-side. + </p> + <p> + 'Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable and nervous, + unable to eat or sleep, and poor Wilson still worse, in a miserable + condition of sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices, so + exquisite and so bilious. Therefore I am constrained away from my joys by + sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going away on Friday. For + myself, it did not affect me at all. Take the mild, soft, relaxing climate—even + the scirocco does not touch me. And the baby grows gloriously fatter in + spite of everything. . . . As for Venice, you can't get even a "Times", + much less an "Athenaeum". We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the + opera (a whole box on the grand tier, mind) for two shillings and + eightpence, English. Also, every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I + are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking + excellent coffee and reading the French papers.' + </p> + <p> + If it were possible to draw more largely on Mrs. Browning's correspondence + for this year, it would certainly supply the record of her intimacy, and + that of her husband, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli. A warm attachment sprang + up between them during that lady's residence in Florence. Its last + evenings were all spent at their house; and, soon after she had bidden + them farewell, she availed herself of a two days' delay in the departure + of the ship to return from Leghorn and be with them one evening more. She + had what seemed a prophetic dread of the voyage to America, though she + attached no superstitious importance to the prediction once made to her + husband that he would be drowned; and learned when it was too late to + change her plans that her presence there was, after all, unnecessary. Mr. + Browning was deeply affected by the news of her death by shipwreck, which + took place on July 16, 1850; and wrote an account of his acquaintance with + her, for publication by her friends. This also, unfortunately, was lost. + Her son was of the same age as his, little more than a year old; but she + left a token of the friendship which might some day have united them, in a + small Bible inscribed to the baby Robert, 'In memory of Angelo Ossoli.' + </p> + <p> + The intended journey to England was delayed for Mr. Browning by the + painful associations connected with his mother's death; but in the summer + of 1851 he found courage to go there: and then, as on each succeeding + visit paid to London with his wife, he commemorated his marriage in a + manner all his own. He went to the church in which it had been solemnized, + and kissed the paving-stones in front of the door. It needed all this love + to comfort Mrs. Browning in the estrangement from her father which was + henceforth to be accepted as final. He had held no communication with her + since her marriage, and she knew that it was not forgiven; but she had + cherished a hope that he would so far relent towards her as to kiss her + child, even if he would not see her. Her prayer to this effect remained, + however, unanswered. + </p> + <p> + In the autumn they proceeded to Paris; whence Mrs. Browning wrote, October + 22 and November 12. + </p> + <p> + 138, Avenue des Champs Elysees. + </p> + <p> + '. . . It was a long time before we could settle ourselves in a private + apartment. . . . At last we came off to these Champs Elysees, to a very + pleasant apartment, the window looking over a large terrace (almost large + enough to serve the purpose of a garden) to the great drive and promenade + of the Parisians when they come out of the streets to sun and shade and + show themselves off among the trees. A pretty little dining-room, a + writing and dressing-room for Robert beside it, a drawing-room beyond + that, with two excellent bedrooms, and third bedroom for a "femme de + menage", kitchen, &c. . . . So this answers all requirements, and the + sun suns us loyally as in duty bound considering the southern aspect, and + we are glad to find ourselves settled for six months. We have had lovely + weather, and have seen a fire only yesterday for the first time since we + left England. . . . We have seen nothing in Paris, except the shell of it. + Yet, two evenings ago we hazarded going to a reception at Lady Elgin's, in + the Faubourg St. Germain, and saw some French, but nobody of distinction. + </p> + <p> + 'It is a good house, I believe, and she has an earnest face which must + mean something. We were invited to go every Monday between eight and + twelve. We go on Friday to Madame Mohl's, where we are to have some of the + "celebrites". . . . Carlyle, for instance, I liked infinitely more in his + personality than I expected to like him, and I saw a great deal of him, + for he travelled with us to Paris, and spent several evenings with us, we + three together. He is one of the most interesting men I could imagine, + even deeply interesting to me; and you come to understand perfectly when + you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn, + sensibility. Highly picturesque, too, he is in conversation; the talk of + writing men is very seldom so good. + </p> + <p> + 'And, do you know, I was much taken, in London, with a young authoress, + Geraldine Jewsbury. You have read her books. . . . She herself is quiet + and simple, and drew my heart out of me a good deal. I felt inclined to + love her in our half-hour's intercourse. . . .' + </p> + <p> + 138, Avenue des Champs Elysees: (Nov. 12). + </p> + <p> + '. . . Robert's father and sister have been paying us a visit during the + last three weeks. They are very affectionate to me, and I love them for + his sake and their own, and am very sorry at the thought of losing them, + as we are on the point of doing. We hope, however, to establish them in + Paris, if we can stay, and if no other obstacle should arise before the + spring, when they must leave Hatcham. Little Wiedemann 'draws', as you may + suppose . . . he is adored by his grandfather, and then, Robert! They are + an affectionate family, and not easy when removed one from another. . . .' + </p> + <p> + On their journey from London to Paris, Mr. and Mrs. Browning had been + joined by Carlyle; and it afterwards struck Mr. Browning as strange that, + in the 'Life' of Carlyle, their companionship on this occasion should be + spoken of as the result of a chance meeting. Carlyle not only went to + Paris with the Brownings, but had begged permission to do so; and Mrs. + Browning had hesitated to grant this because she was afraid her little boy + would be tiresome to him. Her fear, however, proved mistaken. The child's + prattle amused the philosopher, and led him on one occasion to say: 'Why, + sir, you have as many aspirations as Napoleon!' At Paris he would have + been miserable without Mr. Browning's help, in his ignorance of the + language, and impatience of the discomforts which this created for him. He + couldn't ask for anything, he complained, but they brought him the + opposite. + </p> + <p> + On one occasion Mr. Carlyle made a singular remark. He was walking with + Mr. Browning, either in Paris or the neighbouring country, when they + passed an image of the Crucifixion; and glancing towards the figure of + Christ, he said, with his deliberate Scotch utterance, 'Ah, poor fellow, + <i>your</i> part is played out!' + </p> + <p> + Two especially interesting letters are dated from the same address, + February 15 and April 7, 1852. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Beranger lives close to us, and Robert has seen him in his white + hat, wandering along the asphalte. I had a notion, somehow, that he was + very old, but he is only elderly—not much above sixty (which is the + prime of life, nowadays) and he lives quietly and keeps out of scrapes + poetical and political, and if Robert and I had a little less modesty we + are assured that we should find access to him easy. But we can't make up + our minds to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrant minstrels, + when he may probably not know our names. We could never follow the fashion + of certain authors, who send their books about with intimations of their + being likely to be acceptable or not—of which practice poor Tennyson + knows too much for his peace. If, indeed, a letter of introduction to + Beranger were vouchsafed to us from any benign quarter, we should both be + delighted, but we must wait patiently for the influence of the stars. + Meanwhile, we have at last sent our letter [Mazzini's] to George Sand, + accompanied with a little note signed by both of us, though written by me, + as seemed right, being the woman. We half-despaired in doing this—for + it is most difficult, it appears, to get at her, she having taken vows + against seeing strangers, in consequence of various annoyances and + persecutions, in and out of print, which it's the mere instinct of a woman + to avoid—I can understand it perfectly. Also, she is in Paris for + only a few days, and under a new name, to escape from the plague of her + notoriety. People said, "She will never see you—you have no chance, + I am afraid." But we determined to try. At least I pricked Robert up to + the leap—for he was really inclined to sit in his chair and be proud + a little. "No," said I, "you <i>sha'n't</i> be proud, and I <i>won't</i> + be proud, and we <i>will</i> see her—I won't die, if I can help it, + without seeing George Sand." So we gave our letter to a friend, who was to + give it to a friend who was to place it in her hands—her abode being + a mystery, and the name she used unknown. The next day came by the post + this answer: + </p> + <p> + '"Madame, j'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche prochain, rue + Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; et encore je + n'en suis pas absolument certaine—mais je ferai tellement mon + possible, que ma bonne etoile m'y aidera peut-etre un peu. Agreez mille + remerciments de coeur ainsi que Monsieur Browning, que j'espere voir avec + vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez. George Sand. Paris: 12 + fevrier '52." + </p> + <p> + 'This is graceful and kind, is it not?—and we are going to-morrow—I, + rather at the risk of my life, but I shall roll myself up head and all in + a thick shawl, and we shall go in a close carriage, and I hope I shall be + able to tell you the result before shutting up this letter. + </p> + <p> + 'Monday.—I have seen G. S. She received us in a room with a bed in + it, the only room she has to occupy, I suppose, during her short stay in + Paris. She received us very cordially with her hand held out, which I, in + the emotion of the moment, stooped and kissed—upon which she + exclaimed, "Mais non! je ne veux pas," and kissed me. I don't think she is + a great deal taller than I am,—yes, taller, but not a great deal—and + a little over-stout for that height. The upper part of the face is fine, + the forehead, eyebrows and eyes—dark glowing eyes as they should be; + the lower part not so good. The beautiful teeth project a little, flashing + out the smile of the large characteristic mouth, and the chin recedes. It + never could have been a beautiful face Robert and I agree, but noble and + expressive it has been and is. The complexion is olive, quite without + colour; the hair, black and glossy, divided with evident care and twisted + back into a knot behind the head, and she wore no covering to it. Some of + the portraits represent her in ringlets, and ringlets would be much more + becoming to the style of face, I fancy, for the cheeks are rather + over-full. She was dressed in a sort of woollen grey gown, with a jacket + of the same material (according to the ruling fashion), the gown fastened + up to the throat, with a small linen collarette, and plain white muslin + sleeves buttoned round the wrists. The hands offered to me were small and + well-shaped. Her manners were quite as simple as her costume. I never saw + a simpler woman. Not a shade of affectation or consciousness, even—not + a suffusion of coquetry, not a cigarette to be seen! Two or three young + men were sitting with her, and I observed the profound respect with which + they listened to every word she said. She spoke rapidly, with a low, + unemphatic voice. Repose of manner is much more her characteristic than + animation is—only, under all the quietness, and perhaps by means of + it, you are aware of an intense burning soul. She kissed me again when we + went away. . . .' + </p> + <p> + 'April 7.—George Sand we came to know a great deal more of. I think + Robert saw her six times. Once he met her near the Tuileries, offered her + his arm and walked with her the whole length of the gardens. She was not + on that occasion looking as well as usual, being a little too much + "endimanchee" in terrestrial lavenders and super-celestial blues—not, + in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in her at + other times. Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and the + fashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are respectable in all the + "Ladies' Companions" of the day) make the only approach to masculine + wearings to be observed in her. + </p> + <p> + 'She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think—and + the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood. + </p> + <p> + 'Ah! but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I could only go with + Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. He was really very + good and kind to let me go at all after he found the sort of society + rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, but being the prince of + husbands, he was lenient to my desires, and yielded the point. She seems + to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regards society—crowds + of ill-bred men who adore her, 'a genoux bas', betwixt a puff of smoke and + an ejection of saliva—society of the ragged red, diluted with the + low theatrical. She herself so different, so apart, so alone in her + melancholy disdain. I was deeply interested in that poor woman. I felt a + profound compassion for her. I did not mind much even the Greek, in Greek + costume, who 'tutoyed' her, and kissed her I believe, so Robert said—or + the other vulgar man of the theatre, who went down on his knees and called + her "sublime". "Caprice d'amitie," said she with her quiet, gentle scorn. + A noble woman under the mud, be certain. <i>I</i> would kneel down to her, + too, if she would leave it all, throw it off, and be herself as God made + her. But she would not care for my kneeling—she does not care for + me. Perhaps she doesn't care much for anybody by this time, who knows? She + wrote one or two or three kind notes to me, and promised to 'venir + m'embrasser' before she left Paris, but she did not come. We both tried + hard to please her, and she told a friend of ours that she "liked us". + Only we always felt that we couldn't penetrate—couldn't really <i>touch</i> + her—it was all vain. + </p> + <p> + 'Alfred de Musset was to have been at M. Buloz' where Robert was a week + ago, on purpose to meet him, but he was prevented in some way. His + brother, Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead, but + we hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? He is + not capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, I + assure you. . . . We are expecting a visit from Lamartine, who does a + great deal of honour to both of us in the way of appreciation, and was + kind enough to propose to come. I will tell you all about it.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning fully shared his wife's impression of a want of frank + cordiality on George Sand's part; and was especially struck by it in + reference to himself, with whom it seemed more natural that she should + feel at ease. He could only imagine that his studied courtesy towards her + was felt by her as a rebuke to the latitude which she granted to other + men. + </p> + <p> + Another eminent French writer whom he much wished to know was Victor Hugo, + and I am told that for years he carried about him a letter of introduction + from Lord Houghton, always hoping for an opportunity of presenting it. The + hope was not fulfilled, though, in 1866, Mr. Browning crossed to Saint + Malo by the Channel Islands and spent three days in Jersey. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 11 + </h2> + <h3> + 1852-1855 + </h3> + <p> + M. Joseph Milsand—His close Friendship with Mr. Browning; Mrs. + Browning's Impression of him—New Edition of Mr. Browning's Poems—'Christmas + Eve and Easter Day'—'Essay' on Shelley—Summer in London—Dante + Gabriel Rossetti—Florence; secluded Life—Letters from Mr. and + Mrs. Browning—'Colombe's Birthday'—Baths of Lucca—Mrs. + Browning's Letters—Winter in Rome—Mr. and Mrs. Story—Mrs. + Sartoris—Mrs. Fanny Kemble—Summer in London—Tennyson—Ruskin. + </p> + <p> + It was during this winter in Paris that Mr. Browning became acquainted + with M. Joseph Milsand, the second Frenchman with whom he was to be united + by ties of deep friendship and affection. M. Milsand was at that time, and + for long afterwards, a frequent contributor to the 'Revue des Deux + Mondes'; his range of subjects being enlarged by his, for a Frenchman, + exceptional knowledge of English life, language, and literature. He wrote + an article on Quakerism, which was much approved by Mr. William Forster, + and a little volume on Ruskin called 'L'Esthetique Anglaise', which was + published in the 'Bibliotheque de Philosophie Contemporaine'.* Shortly + before the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Browning in Paris, he had accidentally + seen an extract from 'Paracelsus'. This struck him so much that he + procured the two volumes of the works and 'Christmas Eve', and discussed + the whole in the 'Revue' as the second part of an essay entitled 'La + Poesie Anglaise depuis Byron'. Mr. Browning saw the article, and was + naturally touched at finding his poems the object of serious study in a + foreign country, while still so little regarded in his own. It was no less + natural that this should lead to a friendship which, the opening once + given, would have grown up unassisted, at least on Mr. Browning's side; + for M. Milsand united the qualities of a critical intellect with a + tenderness, a loyalty, and a simplicity of nature seldom found in + combination with them. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * He published also an admirable little work on the + requirements of secondary education in France, equally + applicable in many respects to any country and to any time. +</pre> + <p> + The introduction was brought about by the daughter of William Browning, + Mrs. Jebb-Dyke, or more directly by Mr. and Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who were + among the earliest friends of the Browning family in Paris. M. Milsand was + soon an 'habitue' of Mr. Browning's house, as somewhat later of that of + his father and sister; and when, many years afterwards, Miss Browning had + taken up her abode in England, he spent some weeks of the early summer in + Warwick Crescent, whenever his home duties or personal occupations allowed + him to do so. Several times also the poet and his sister joined him at + Saint-Aubin, the seaside village in Normandy which was his special resort, + and where they enjoyed the good offices of Madame Milsand, a home-staying, + genuine French wife and mother, well acquainted with the resources of its + very primitive life. M. Milsand died, in 1886, of apoplexy, the + consequence, I believe, of heart-disease brought on by excessive + cold-bathing. The first reprint of 'Sordello', in 1863, had been, as is + well known, dedicated to him. The 'Parleyings', published within a year of + his death, were inscribed to his memory. Mr. Browning's affection for him + finds utterance in a few strong words which I shall have occasion to + quote. An undated fragment concerning him from Mrs. Browning to her + sister-in-law, points to a later date than the present, but may as well be + inserted here. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I quite love M. Milsand for being interested in Penini. What a + perfect creature he is, to be sure! He always stands in the top place + among our gods—Give him my cordial regards, always, mind. . . . He + wants, I think—the only want of that noble nature—the sense of + spiritual relation; and also he puts under his feet too much the worth of + impulse and passion, in considering the powers of human nature. For the + rest, I don't know such a man. He has intellectual conscience—or say—the + conscience of the intellect, in a higher degree than I ever saw in any man + of any country—and this is no less Robert's belief than mine. When + we hear the brilliant talkers and noisy thinkers here and there and + everywhere, we go back to Milsand with a real reverence. Also, I never + shall forget his delicacy to me personally, nor his tenderness of heart + about my child. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The criticism was inevitable from the point of view of Mrs. Browning's + nature and experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it if + she had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never have agreed with + her as to the authority of 'impulse and passion', but I am sure he did not + underrate their importance as factors in human life. + </p> + <p> + M. Milsand was one of the few readers of Browning with whom I have talked + about him, who had studied his work from the beginning, and had realized + the ambition of his first imaginative flights. He was more perplexed by + the poet's utterance in later years. 'Quel homme extraordinaire!' he once + said to me; 'son centre n'est pas au milieu.' The usual criticism would + have been that, while his own centre was in the middle, he did not seek it + in the middle for the things of which he wrote; but I remember that, at + the moment in which the words were spoken, they impressed me as full of + penetration. Mr. Browning had so much confidence in M. Milsand's + linguistic powers that he invariably sent him his proof-sheets for final + revision, and was exceedingly pleased with such few corrections as his + friend was able to suggest. + </p> + <p> + With the name of Milsand connects itself in the poet's life that of a + younger, but very genuine friend of both, M. Gustave Dourlans: a man of + fine critical and intellectual powers, unfortunately neutralized by bad + health. M. Dourlans also became a visitor at Warwick Crescent, and a + frequent correspondent of Mr. or rather of Miss Browning. He came from + Paris once more, to witness the last sad scene in Westminster Abbey. + </p> + <p> + The first three years of Mr. Browning's married life had been unproductive + from a literary point of view. The realization and enjoyment of the new + companionship, the duties as well as interests of the dual existence, and, + lastly, the shock and pain of his mother's death, had absorbed his mental + energies for the time being. But by the close of 1848 he had prepared for + publication in the following year a new edition of 'Paracelsus' and the + 'Bells and Pomegranates' poems. The reprint was in two volumes, and the + publishers were Messrs. Chapman and Hall; the system, maintained through + Mr. Moxon, of publication at the author's expense, being abandoned by Mr. + Browning when he left home. Mrs. Browning writes of him on this occasion + that he is paying 'peculiar attention to the objections made against + certain obscurities.' He himself prefaced the edition by these words: + 'Many of these pieces were out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from + circulation, when the corrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was + prepared. The various Poems and Dramas have received the author's most + careful revision. December 1848.' + </p> + <p> + In 1850, in Florence, he wrote 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; and in + December 1851, in Paris, the essay on Shelley, to be prefixed to + twenty-five supposed letters of that poet, published by Moxon in 1852.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * They were discovered, not long afterwards, to be spurious, + and the book suppressed. +</pre> + <p> + The reading of this Essay might serve to correct the frequent + misapprehension of Mr. Browning's religious views which has been based on + the literal evidence of 'Christmas Eve', were it not that its companion + poem has failed to do so; though the tendency of 'Easter Day' is as + different from that of its precursor as their common Christianity admits. + The balance of argument in 'Christmas Eve' is in favour of direct + revelation of religious truth and prosaic certainty regarding it; while + the 'Easter Day' vision makes a tentative and unresting attitude the first + condition of the religious life; and if Mr. Browning has meant to say—as + he so often did say—that religious certainties are required for the + undeveloped mind, but that the growing religious intelligence walks best + by a receding light, he denies the positive basis of Christian belief, and + is no more orthodox in the one set of reflections than in the other. The + spirit, however, of both poems is ascetic: for the first divorces + religious worship from every appeal to the poetic sense; the second + refuses to recognize, in poetry or art, or the attainments of the + intellect, or even in the best human love, any practical correspondence + with religion. The dissertation on Shelley is, what 'Sordello' was, what + its author's treatment of poets and poetry always must be—an + indirect vindication of the conceptions of human life which 'Christmas Eve + and Easter Day' condemns. This double poem stands indeed so much alone in + Mr. Browning's work that we are tempted to ask ourselves to what + circumstance or impulse, external or internal, it has been due; and we can + only conjecture that the prolonged communion with a mind so spiritual as + that of his wife, the special sympathies and differences which were + elicited by it, may have quickened his religious imagination, while + directing it towards doctrinal or controversial issues which it had not + previously embraced. + </p> + <p> + The 'Essay' is a tribute to the genius of Shelley; it is also a + justification of his life and character, as the balance of evidence then + presented them to Mr. Browning's mind. It rests on a definition of the + respective qualities of the objective and the subjective poet. . . . While + both, he says, are gifted with the fuller perception of nature and man, + the one endeavours to + </p> + <p> + 'reproduce things external (whether the phenomena of the scenic universe, + or the manifested action of the human heart and brain) with an immediate + reference, in every case, to the common eye and apprehension of his + fellow-men, assumed capable of receiving and profiting by this + reproduction'—the other 'is impelled to embody the thing he + perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One + above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their + absolute truth,—an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially + attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees—the + 'Ideas' of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand—it + is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in + action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he digs + where he stands,—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the + nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which + he desires to perceive and speak.' + </p> + <p> + The objective poet is therefore a fashioner, the subjective is best + described as a seer. The distinction repeats itself in the interest with + which we study their respective lives. We are glad of the biography of the + objective poet because it reveals to us the power by which he works; we + desire still more that of the subjective poet, because it presents us with + another aspect of the work itself. The poetry of such a one is an + effluence much more than a production; it is + </p> + <p> + 'the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not + separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily + approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it we apprehend him, + and certainly we cannot love it without loving him.' + </p> + <p> + The reason of Mr. Browning's prolonged and instinctive reverence for + Shelley is thus set forth in the opening pages of the Essay: he recognized + in his writings the quality of a 'subjective' poet; hence, as he + understands the word, the evidence of a divinely inspired man. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning goes on to say that we need the recorded life in order quite + to determine to which class of inspiration a given work belongs; and + though he regards the work of Shelley as carrying its warrant within + itself, his position leaves ample room for a withdrawal of faith, a + reversal of judgment, if the ascertained facts of the poet's life should + at any future time bear decided witness against him. He is also careful to + avoid drawing too hard and fast a line between the two opposite kinds of + poet. He admits that a pure instance of either is seldom to be found; he + sees no reason why + </p> + <p> + 'these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter from the same + poet in successive perfect works. . . . A mere running-in of the one + faculty upon the other' being, meanwhile, 'the ordinary circumstance.' + </p> + <p> + I venture, however, to think, that in his various and necessary + concessions, he lets slip the main point; and for the simple reason that + it is untenable. The terms 'subjective' and 'objective' denote a real and + very important difference on the ground of judgment, but one which tends + more and more to efface itself in the sphere of the higher creative + imagination. Mr. Browning might as briefly, and I think more fully, have + expressed the salient quality of his poet, even while he could describe it + in these emphatic words: + </p> + <p> + 'I pass at once, therefore, from Shelley's minor excellencies to his + noblest and predominating characteristic. + </p> + <p> + 'This I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the + absolute, and of Beauty and Good in the concrete, while he throws, from + his poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous films + for the connexion of each with each, than have been thrown by any modern + artificer of whom I have knowledge . . . I would rather consider Shelley's + poetry as a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment of the + correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, + and of the actual to the ideal than . . .' + </p> + <p> + This essay has, in common with the poems of the preceding years, the one + quality of a largely religious and, in a certain sense, Christian spirit, + and in this respect it falls naturally into the general series of its + author's works. The assertion of Platonic ideas suggests, however, a mood + of spiritual thought for which the reference in 'Pauline' has been our + only, and a scarcely sufficient preparation; nor could the most definite + theism to be extracted from Platonic beliefs ever satisfy the human + aspirations which, in a nature like that of Robert Browning, culminate in + the idea of God. The metaphysical aspect of the poet's genius here + distinctly reappears for the first time since 'Sordello', and also for the + last. It becomes merged in the simpler forms of the religious imagination. + </p> + <p> + The justification of the man Shelley, to which great part of the Essay is + devoted, contains little that would seem new to his more recent + apologists; little also which to the writer's later judgments continued to + recommend itself as true. It was as a great poetic artist, not as a great + poet, that the author of 'Prometheus' and 'The Cenci', of 'Julian and + Maddalo', and 'Epipsychidion' was finally to rank in Mr. Browning's mind. + The whole remains nevertheless a memorial of a very touching affection; + and whatever intrinsic value the Essay may possess, its main interest must + always be biographical. Its motive and inspiration are set forth in the + closing lines: + </p> + <p> + 'It is because I have long held these opinions in assurance and gratitude, + that I catch at the opportunity offered to me of expressing them here; + knowing that the alacrity to fulfil an humble office conveys more love + than the acceptance of the honour of a higher one, and that better, + therefore, than the signal service it was the dream of my boyhood to + render to his fame and memory, may be the saying of a few, inadequate + words upon these scarcely more important supplementary letters of <i>Shelley</i>.' + </p> + <p> + If Mr. Browning had seen reason to doubt the genuineness of the letters in + question, his Introduction could not have been written. That, while + receiving them as genuine, he thought them unimportant, gave it, as he + justly discerned, its full significance. + </p> + <p> + Mr. and Mrs. Browning returned to London for the summer of 1852, and we + have a glimpse of them there in a letter from Mr. Fox to his daughter. + </p> + <p> + July 16, '52. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I had a charming hour with the Brownings yesterday; more fascinated + with her than ever. She talked lots of George Sand, and so beautifully. + Moreover she silver-electroplated Louis Napoleon!! They are lodging at 58 + Welbeck Street; the house has a queer name on the door, and belongs to + some Belgian family. + </p> + <p> + 'They came in late one night, and R. B. says that in the morning twilight + he saw three portraits on the bedroom wall, and speculated who they might + be. Light gradually showed the first, Beatrice Cenci, "Good!" said he; "in + a poetic region." More light: the second, Lord Byron! Who can the third + be? And what think you it was, but your sketch (engraved chalk portrait) + of me? He made quite a poem and picture of the affair. + </p> + <p> + 'She seems much better; did not put her hand before her mouth, which I + took as a compliment: and the young Florentine was gracious . . .' + </p> + <p> + It need hardly be said that this valued friend was one of the first whom + Mr. Browning introduced to his wife, and that she responded with ready + warmth to his claims on her gratitude and regard. More than one joint + letter from herself and her husband commemorates this new phase of the + intimacy; one especially interesting was written from Florence in 1858, in + answer to the announcement by Mr. Fox of his election for Oldham; and Mr. + Browning's contribution, which is very characteristic, will appear in due + course. + </p> + <p> + Either this or the preceding summer brought Mr. Browning for the first + time into personal contact with an early lover of his works: Mr. D. G. + Rossetti. They had exchanged letters a year or two before, on the subject + of 'Pauline', which Rossetti (as I have already mentioned) had read in + ignorance of its origin, but with the conviction that only the author of + 'Paracelsus' could have produced it. He wrote to Mr. Browning to ascertain + the fact, and to tell him he had admired the poem so much as to transcribe + it whole from the British Museum copy. He now called on him with Mr. + William Allingham; and doubly recommended himself to the poet's interest + by telling him that he was a painter. When Mr. Browning was again in + London, in 1855, Rossetti began painting his portrait, which he finished + in Paris in the ensuing winter. + </p> + <p> + The winter of 1852-3 saw the family once more in Florence, and at Casa + Guidi, where the routine of quiet days was resumed. Mrs. Browning has + spoken in more than one of her letters of the comparative social seclusion + in which she and her husband had elected to live. This seclusion was much + modified in later years, and many well-known English and American names + become associated with their daily life. It referred indeed almost + entirely to their residence in Florence, where they found less inducement + to enter into society than in London, Paris, and Rome. But it is on record + that during the fifteen years of his married life, Mr. Browning never + dined away from home, except on one occasion—an exception proving + the rule; and we cannot therefore be surprised that he should subsequently + have carried into the experience of an unshackled and very interesting + social intercourse, a kind of freshness which a man of fifty has not + generally preserved. + </p> + <p> + The one excitement which presented itself in the early months of 1853 was + the production of 'Colombe's Birthday'. The first allusion to this comes + to us in a letter from the poet to Lady, then Mrs. Theodore, Martin, from + which I quote a few passages. + </p> + <p> + Florence: Jan. 31, '53. + </p> + <p> + 'My dear Mrs. Martin,—. . . be assured that I, for my part, have + been in no danger of forgetting my promises any more than your + performances—which were admirable of all kinds. I shall be delighted + if you can do anything for "Colombe"—do what you think best with it, + and for me—it will be pleasant to be in such hands—only, pray + follow the corrections in the last edition—(Chapman and Hall will + give you a copy)—as they are important to the sense. As for the + condensation into three acts—I shall leave that, and all cuttings + and the like, to your own judgment—and, come what will, I shall have + to be grateful to you, as before. For the rest, you will play the part to + heart's content, I <i>know</i>. . . . And how good it will be to see you + again, and make my wife see you too—she who "never saw a great + actress" she says—unless it was Dejazet! . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Browning writes about the performance, April 12: + </p> + <p> + '. . . I am beginning to be anxious about 'Colombe's Birthday'. I care + much more about it than Robert does. He says that no one will mistake it + for his speculation; it's Mr. Buckstone's affair altogether. True—but + I should like it to succeed, being Robert's play, notwithstanding. But the + play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous about it. + On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know,—and what + in the world made them select it, if it is not likely to answer their + purpose? By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been + "prepared for the stage by the author." Don't believe a word of it. Robert + just said "yes" when they wrote to ask him, and not a line of + communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, suggested + nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his new edition, and that + was the whole. . . .' + </p> + <p> + She communicates the result in May: + </p> + <p> + '. . . Yes, Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a + play of that kind. It was a "succes d'estime" and something more, which is + surprising perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss + Faucit was alone in doing us justice. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Browning did see 'Miss Faucit' on her next visit to England. She + agreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone, one morning, at + her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half. The only person + who had 'done justice' to 'Colombe' besides contributing to whatever + success her husband's earlier plays had obtained, was much more than 'a + great actress' to Mrs. Browning's mind; and we may imagine it would have + gone hard with her before she renounced the pleasure of making her + acquaintance. + </p> + <p> + Two letters, dated from the Baths of Lucca, July 15 and August 20, '53, + tell how and where the ensuing summer was passed, besides introducing us, + for the first time, to Mr. and Mrs. William Story, between whose family + and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was ever afterwards to + subsist. + </p> + <p> + July 15. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a little holy + fear of the company there—but the scenery, and the coolness, and + convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three + months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of not + calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we were there + four years ago just after the birth of our child. The mountains are + wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work. + </p> + <p> + 'Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with it + the idea of home. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Casa Tolomei, Alta Villa, Bagni di Lucca: Aug. 20. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We are enjoying the mountains here—riding the donkeys in the + footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful. The + strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer, through growing on + different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests, + strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell + them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story help the + mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the + biographer of his father, and for himself, sculptor and poet—and she + a sympathetic graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We + go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one another's houses. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion to a + village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. We + returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down various + precipices—but the scenery was exquisite—past speaking of for + beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite + beasts and setting their teeth against the sky—it was wonderful. . . + .' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was 'In a Balcony'; also, + probably, some of the 'Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration in 'By + the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge to which he + walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton, was also + an incident of this summer. + </p> + <p> + The next three letters from which I am able to quote, describe the + impressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome. + </p> + <p> + Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 30 piano. Jan. 18, 54. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Well, we are all well to begin with—and have been well—our + troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey of + eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and + triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way—that + passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the + highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually—for + the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and + scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys—how + they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the + Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we + arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home,—and + we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning + before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant + with a message, "the boy was in convulsions—there was danger." We + hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All + that first day we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied—never + opened his eyes in consciousness—and by eight in the evening he was + gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house—could not + be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever, with a tendency to the + brain—and within two days her life was almost despaired of—exactly + the same malady as her brother's. . . . Also the English nurse was + apparently dying at the Story's house, and Emma Page, the artist's + youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease. + </p> + <p> + '. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once that the + three patients recovered—only in poor little Edith's case Roman + fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since in periodical + recurrence. She is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to + life, but it is exhausting. . . . Now you will understand what ghostly + flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a + death-bed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is + laid close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph) and where + the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the carriage + together—I am horribly weak about such things—I can't look on + the earth-side of death—I flinch from corpses and graves, and never + meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I + look <i>over</i> death, and upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So + that it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which + the poor stricken mother sat so calmly—not to drop from the seat. + Well—all this has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the + Caesars in the old strain of thought—the antique words get muddled + and blurred with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh + grave-clay. Rome is spoilt to me—there's the truth. Still, one lives + through one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at + almost enjoying some things—the climate, for instance, which, though + pernicious to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the + sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and + rifts of ruins. . . . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to + the sun, and do work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, + hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris's (A. K.) once or twice a week, and + have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three + together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly. + </p> + <p> + 'If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust swept out of + salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides! . . .' + </p> + <p> + Rome: March 29. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, + especially Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair + and radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic, + unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought and convention—but + noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. She thinks me credulous + and full of dreams—but does not despise me for that reason—which + is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for I should not be quite + easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous—her + milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy family relations, which + poor Fanny Kemble's has not had. Mrs. Sartoris' house has the best society + in Rome—and exquisite music of course. We met Lockhart there, and my + husband sees a good deal of him—more than I do—because of the + access of cold weather lately which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert + went down to the seaside, on a day's excursion with him and the Sartorises—and + I hear found favour in his sight. Said the critic, "I like Browning—he + isn't at all like a damned literary man." That's a compliment, I believe, + according to your dictionary. It made me laugh and think of you directly. + . . . Robert has been sitting for his picture to Mr. Fisher, the English + artist who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor. You remember those pictures in + Mr. Kenyon's house in London. Well, he has painted Robert's, and it is an + admirable likeness. The expression is an exceptional expression, but + highly characteristic. . . .' + </p> + <p> + May 19. + </p> + <p> + '. . . To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don't + pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome, a + watering-place written over the antique, and I haven't taken to it as a + poet should I suppose. And let us speak the truth above all things. I am + strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the place have + not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child, the light + of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him. . . . The + pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the two sisters, + who are charming and excellent both of them, in different ways, and + certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna, upon + picnic excursions—they, and certain of their friends; for instance, + M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, who is witty and agreeable, + M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, who is an agreeable man, and Mr. Lyons, + the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the + sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise + and champagne. . . .' + </p> + <p> + It must have been on one of the excursions here described that an incident + took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristic comments in a + letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnic party had + strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was not strong enough to + join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, stayed with her; which + act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble to exclaim that he was the only + man she had ever known who behaved like a Christian to his wife. She was, + when he wrote this letter, reading his works for the first time, and had + expressed admiration for them; but, he continued, none of the kind things + she said to him on that subject could move him as did those words in the + Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would have modified her statement in later years, + for the sake of one English and one American husband now closely related + to her. Even then, perhaps, she did not make it without inward reserve. + But she will forgive me, I am sure, for having repeated it. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, and says: + 'I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener than is set + down, but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked her extremely.' + </p> + <p> + Another of Mrs. Browning's letters is written from Florence, June 6 ('54): + </p> + <p> + '. . . We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go + northward. I love Florence—the place looks exquisitely beautiful in + its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the + nightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another, + there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place + to live in—cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limits + of civilization yet out of the crush of it. . . . We have spent two + delicious evenings at villas outside the gates, one with young Lytton, Sir + Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think. I like him . . . we both + do . . . from the bottom of our hearts. Then, our friend, Frederick + Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again. + </p> + <p> + . . . . . + </p> + <p> + '. . . Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most of + her time with us . . . singing passionately and talking eloquently. She is + really charming. . . .' + </p> + <p> + I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of the + winter of 1854-5. In all probability Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in, or + as near as possible to, Florence, since their income was still too limited + for continuous travelling. They possibly talked of going to England, but + postponed it till the following year; we know that they went there in + 1855, taking his sister with them as they passed through Paris. They did + not this time take lodgings for the summer months, but hired a house at 13 + Dorset Street, Portman Square; and there, on September 27, Tennyson read + his new poem, 'Maud', to Mrs. Browning, while Rossetti, the only other + person present besides the family, privately drew his likeness in pen and + ink. The likeness has become well known; the unconscious sitter must also, + by this time, be acquainted with it; but Miss Browning thinks no one + except herself, who was near Rossetti at the table, was at the moment + aware of its being made. All eyes must have been turned towards Tennyson, + seated by his hostess on the sofa. Miss Arabel Barrett was also of the + party. + </p> + <p> + Some interesting words of Mrs. Browning's carry their date in the allusion + to Mr. Ruskin; but I cannot ascertain it more precisely: + </p> + <p> + 'We went to Denmark Hill yesterday to have luncheon with them, and see the + Turners, which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, and so + does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest,—refined and truthful. I like + him very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances made this + year in England.' + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 12 + </h2> + <h3> + 1855-1858 + </h3> + <p> + 'Men and Women'—'Karshook'—'Two in the Campagna'—Winter + in Paris; Lady Elgin—'Aurora Leigh'—Death of Mr. Kenyon and + Mr. Barrett—Penini—Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Browning—The + Florentine Carnival—Baths of Lucca—Spiritualism—Mr. + Kirkup; Count Ginnasi—Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox—Havre. + </p> + <p> + The beautiful 'One Word More' was dated from London in September; and the + fifty poems gathered together under the title of 'Men and Women' were + published before the close of the year, in two volumes, by Messrs. Chapman + and Hall.* They are all familiar friends to Mr. Browning's readers, in + their first arrangement and appearance, as in later redistributions and + reprints; but one curious little fact concerning them is perhaps not + generally known. In the eighth line of the fourteenth section of 'One Word + More' they were made to include 'Karshook (Ben Karshook's Wisdom)', which + never was placed amongst them. It was written in April 1854; and the + dedication of the volume must have been, as it so easily might be, in + existence, before the author decided to omit it. The wrong name, once + given, was retained, I have no doubt, from preference for its terminal + sound; and 'Karshook' only became 'Karshish' in the Tauchnitz copy of + 1872, and in the English edition of 1889. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * The date is given in the edition of 1868 as London 185-; + in the Tauchnitz selection of 1872, London and Florence 184- + and 185-; in the new English edition 184-and 185-. +</pre> + <p> + 'Karshook' appeared in 1856 in 'The Keepsake', edited by Miss Power; but, + as we are told on good authority, has been printed in no edition or + selection of the Poet's works. I am therefore justified in inserting it + here. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I + + 'Would a man 'scape the rod?' + Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, + 'See that he turn to God + The day before his death.' + + 'Ay, could a man inquire + When it shall come!' I say. + The Rabbi's eye shoots fire— + 'Then let him turn to-day!' +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + II + + Quoth a young Sadducee: + 'Reader of many rolls, + Is it so certain we + Have, as they tell us, souls?' + + 'Son, there is no reply!' + The Rabbi bit his beard: + 'Certain, a soul have <i>I</i>— + <i>We</i> may have none,' he sneer'd. + + Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, + The Right-hand Temple-column, + Taught babes in grace their grammar, + And struck the simple, solemn. +</pre> + <p> + Among this first collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called 'Two in + the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of a restless + spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened and perplexed by + the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that should impress one as + more purely dramatic ever fell from Mr. Browning's pen. We are told, + nevertheless, in Mr. Sharp's 'Life', that a personal character no less + actual than that of the 'Guardian Angel' has been claimed for it. The + writer, with characteristic delicacy, evades all discussion of the + question; but he concedes a great deal in his manner of doing so. The + poem, he says, conveys a sense of that necessary isolation of the + individual soul which resists the fusing power of the deepest love; and + its meaning cannot be personally—because it is universally—true. + I do not think Mr. Browning meant to emphasize this aspect of the mystery + of individual life, though the poem, in a certain sense, expresses it. We + have no reason to believe that he ever accepted it as constant; and in no + case could he have intended to refer its conditions to himself. He was + often isolated by the processes of his mind; but there was in him no + barrier to that larger emotional sympathy which we think of as sympathy of + the soul. If this poem were true, 'One Word More' would be false, quite + otherwise than in that approach to exaggeration which is incidental to the + poetic form. The true keynote of 'Two in the Campagna' is the pain of + perpetual change, and of the conscious, though unexplained, predestination + to it. Mr. Browning could have still less in common with such a state, + since one of the qualities for which he was most conspicuous was the + enormous power of anchorage which his affections possessed. Only length of + time and variety of experience could fully test this power or fully + display it; but the signs of it had not been absent from even his earliest + life. He loved fewer people in youth than in advancing age: nature and + circumstance combined to widen the range, and vary the character of his + human interests; but where once love or friendship had struck a root, only + a moral convulsion could avail to dislodge it. I make no deduction from + this statement when I admit that the last and most emphatic words of the + poem in question, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Only I discern— + Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn, +</pre> + <p> + did probably come from the poet's heart, as they also found a deep echo in + that of his wife, who much loved them. + </p> + <p> + From London they returned to Paris for the winter of 1855-6. The younger + of the Kemble sisters, Mrs. Sartoris, was also there with her family; and + the pleasant meetings of the Campagna renewed themselves for Mr. Browning, + though in a different form. He was also, with his sister, a constant + visitor at Lady Elgin's. Both they and Mrs. Browning were greatly attached + to her, and she warmly reciprocated the feeling. As Mr. Locker's letter + has told us, Mr. Browning was in the habit of reading poetry to her, and + when his sister had to announce his arrival from Italy or England, she + would say: 'Robert is coming to nurse you, and read to you.' Lady Elgin + was by this time almost completely paralyzed. She had lost the power of + speech, and could only acknowledge the little attentions which were paid + to her by some graceful pathetic gesture of the left hand; but she + retained her sensibilities to the last; and Miss Browning received on one + occasion a serious lesson in the risk of ever assuming that the appearance + of unconsciousness guarantees its reality. Lady Augusta Bruce had asked + her, in her mother's presence, how Mrs. Browning was; and, imagining that + Lady Elgin was unable to hear or understand, she had answered with + incautious distinctness, 'I am afraid she is very ill,' when a little sob + from the invalid warned her of her mistake. Lady Augusta quickly repaired + it by rejoining, 'but she is better than she was, is she not?' Miss + Browning of course assented. + </p> + <p> + There were other friends, old and new, whom Mr. Browning occasionally saw, + including, I need hardly say, the celebrated Madame Mohl. In the main, + however, he led a quiet life, putting aside many inducements to leave his + home. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Browning was then writing 'Aurora Leigh', and her husband must have + been more than ever impressed by her power of work, as displayed by her + manner of working. To him, as to most creative writers, perfect quiet was + indispensable to literary production. She wrote in pencil, on scraps of + paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room, open to interruption + from chance visitors, or from her little omnipresent son; simply hiding + the paper beside her if anyone came in, and taking it up again when she + was free. And if this process was conceivable in the large, comparatively + silent spaces of their Italian home, and amidst habits of life which + reserved social intercourse for the close of the working day, it baffles + belief when one thinks of it as carried on in the conditions of a Parisian + winter, and the little 'salon' of the apartment in the Rue du Colisee in + which those months were spent. The poem was completed in the ensuing + summer, in Mr. Kenyon's London house, and dedicated, October 17, in deeply + pathetic words to that faithful friend, whom the writer was never to see + again. + </p> + <p> + The news of his death, which took place in December 1856, reached Mr. and + Mrs. Browning in Florence, to be followed in the spring by that of Mrs. + Browning's father. Husband and wife had both determined to forego any + pecuniary benefit which might accrue to them from this event; but they + were not called upon to exercise their powers of renunciation. By Mr. + Kenyon's will they were the richer, as is now, I think, generally known, + the one by six thousand, the other by four thousand guineas.* Of that + cousin's long kindness Mrs. Browning could scarcely in after-days trust + herself to speak. It was difficult to her, she said, even to write his + name without tears. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Kenyon had considerable wealth, derived, like Mr. + Barrett's, from West Indian estates. +</pre> + <p> + I have alluded, perhaps tardily, to Mr. Browning's son, a sociable little + being who must for some time have been playing a prominent part in his + parents' lives. I saw him for the first time in this winter of 1855-6, and + remember the grave expression of the little round face, the outline of + which was common, at all events in childhood, to all the members of his + mother's family, and was conspicuous in her, if we may trust an early + portrait which has recently come to light. He wore the curling hair to + which she refers in a later letter, and pretty frocks and frills, in which + she delighted to clothe him. It is on record that, on one of the journeys + of this year, a trunk was temporarily lost which contained Peni's + embroidered trousers, and the MS., whole or in part, of 'Aurora Leigh'; + and that Mrs. Browning had scarcely a thought to spare for her poem, in + face of the damage to her little boy's appearance which the accident + involved. + </p> + <p> + How he came by his familiar name of Penini—hence Peni, and Pen—neither + signifies in itself, nor has much bearing on his father's family history; + but I cannot refrain from a word of comment on Mr. Hawthorne's fantastic + conjecture, which has been asserted and reasserted in opposition to Mr. + Browning's own statement of the case. According to Mr. Hawthorne, the name + was derived from Apennino, and bestowed on the child in babyhood, because + Apennino was a colossal statue, and he was so very small. It would be + strange indeed that any joke connecting 'Baby' with a given colossal + statue should have found its way into the family without father, mother, + or nurse being aware of it; or that any joke should have been accepted + there which implied that the little boy was not of normal size. But the + fact is still more unanswerable that Apennino could by no process + congenial to the Italian language be converted into Penini. Its inevitable + abbreviation would be Pennino with a distinct separate sounding of the + central n's, or Nino. The accentuation of Penini is also distinctly + German. + </p> + <p> + During this winter in Paris, little Wiedemann, as his parents tried to + call him—his full name was Robert Wiedemann Barrett—had + developed a decided turn for blank verse. He would extemporize short + poems, singing them to his mother, who wrote them down as he sang. There + is no less proof of his having possessed a talent for music, though it + first naturally showed itself in the love of a cheerful noise. His father + had once sat down to the piano, for a serious study of some piece, when + the little boy appeared, with the evident intention of joining in the + performance. Mr. Browning rose precipitately, and was about to leave the + room. 'Oh!' exclaimed the hurt mother, 'you are going away, and he has + brought his three drums to accompany you upon.' She herself would + undoubtedly have endured the mixed melody for a little time, though her + husband did not think she seriously wished him to do so. But if he did not + play the piano to the accompaniment of Pen's drums, he played piano duets + with him as soon as the boy was old enough to take part in them; and + devoted himself to his instruction in this, as in other and more important + branches of knowledge. + </p> + <p> + Peni had also his dumb companions, as his father had had before him. + Tortoises lived at one end of the famous balcony at Casa Guidi; and when + the family were at the Baths of Lucca, Mr. Browning would stow away little + snakes in his bosom, and produce them for the child's amusement. As the + child grew into a man, the love of animals which he had inherited became + conspicuous in him; and it gave rise to many amusing and some pathetic + little episodes of his artist life. The creatures which he gathered about + him were generally, I think, more highly organized than those which + elicited his father's peculiar tenderness; it was natural that he should + exact more pictorial or more companionable qualities from them. But father + and son concurred in the fondness for snakes, and in a singular + predilection for owls; and they had not been long established in Warwick + Crescent, when a bird of that family was domesticated there. We shall hear + of it in a letter from Mr. Browning. + </p> + <p> + Of his son's moral quality as quite a little child his father has told me + pretty and very distinctive stories, but they would be out of place here.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * I am induced, on second thoughts, to subjoin one of these, + for its testimony to the moral atmosphere into which the + child had been born. He was sometimes allowed to play with a + little boy not of his own class—perhaps the son of a + 'contadino'. The child was unobjectionable, or neither + Penini nor his parents would have endured the association; + but the servants once thought themselves justified in + treating him cavalierly, and Pen flew indignant to his + mother, to complain of their behaviour. Mrs. Browning at + once sought little Alessandro, with kind words and a large + piece of cake; but this, in Pen's eyes, only aggravated the + offence; it was a direct reflection on his visitor's + quality. 'He doesn't tome for take,' he burst forth; 'he + tomes because he is my friend.' How often, since I heard + this first, have we repeated the words, 'he doesn't tome for + take,' in half-serious definition of a disinterested person + or act! They became a standing joke. +</pre> + <p> + Mrs. Browning seems now to have adopted the plan of writing independent + letters to her sister-in-law; and those available for our purpose are + especially interesting. The buoyancy of tone which has habitually marked + her communications, but which failed during the winter in Rome, reasserts + itself in the following extract. Her maternal comments on Peni and his + perfections have hitherto been so carefully excluded, that a brief + allusion to him may be allowed on the present occasion. + </p> + <p> + 1857. + </p> + <p> + 'My dearest Sarianna, . . . Here is Penini's letter, which takes up so + much room that I must be sparing of mine—and, by the way, if you + consider him improved in his writing, give the praise to Robert, who has + been taking most patient pains with him indeed. You will see how the + little curly head is turned with carnival doings. So gay a carnival never + was in our experience, for until last year (when we were absent) all masks + had been prohibited, and now everybody has eaten of the tree of good and + evil till not an apple is left. Peni persecuted me to let him have a + domino—with tears and embraces—he "<i>almost never</i> in all + his life had had a domino," and he would like it so. Not a black domino! + no—he hated black—but a blue domino, trimmed with pink! that + was his taste. The pink trimming I coaxed him out of, but for the rest, I + let him have his way. . . . For my part, the universal madness reached me + sitting by the fire (whence I had not stirred for three months), and you + will open your eyes when I tell you that I went (in domino and masked) to + the great opera-ball. Yes! I did, really. Robert, who had been invited two + or three times to other people's boxes, had proposed to return their + kindness by taking a box himself at the opera this night, and entertaining + two or three friends with galantine and champagne. Just as he and I were + lamenting the impossibility of my going, on that very morning the wind + changed, the air grew soft and mild, and he maintained that I might and + should go. There was no time to get a domino of my own (Robert himself had + a beautiful one made, and I am having it metamorphosed into a black silk + gown for myself!) so I sent out and hired one, buying the mask. And very + much amused I was. I like to see these characteristic things. (I shall + never rest, Sarianna, till I risk my reputation at the 'bal de l'opera' at + Paris). Do you think I was satisfied with staying in the box? No, indeed. + Down I went, and Robert and I elbowed our way through the crowd to the + remotest corner of the ball below. Somebody smote me on the shoulder and + cried "Bella Mascherina!" and I answered as impudently as one feels under + a mask. At two o'clock in the morning, however, I had to give up and come + away (being overcome by the heavy air) and ingloriously left Robert and + our friends to follow at half-past four. Think of the refinement and + gentleness—yes, I must call it <i>superiority</i> of this people—when + no excess, no quarrelling, no rudeness nor coarseness can be observed in + the course of such wild masked liberty; not a touch of licence anywhere, + and perfect social equality! Our servant Ferdinando side by side in the + same ball-room with the Grand Duke, and no class's delicacy offended + against! For the Grand Duke went down into the ball-room for a short time. + . . .' + </p> + <p> + The summer of 1857 saw the family once more at the Baths of Lucca, and + again in company with Mr. Lytton. He had fallen ill at the house of their + common friend, Miss Blagden, also a visitor there; and Mr. Browning shared + in the nursing, of which she refused to entrust any part to less friendly + hands. He sat up with the invalid for four nights; and would doubtless + have done so for as many more as seemed necessary, but that Mrs. Browning + protested against this trifling with his own health. + </p> + <p> + The only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning and his + wife referred to the subject of spiritualism. Mrs. Browning held doctrines + which prepared her to accept any real or imagined phenomena betokening + intercourse with the spirits of the dead; nor could she be repelled by + anything grotesque or trivial in the manner of this intercourse, because + it was no part of her belief that a spirit still inhabiting the atmosphere + of our earth, should exhibit any dignity or solemnity not belonging to him + while he lived upon it. The question must have been discussed by them on + its general grounds at a very early stage of their intimacy; but it only + assumed practical importance when Mr. Home came to Florence in 1857 or + 1858. Mr. Browning found himself compelled to witness some of the + 'manifestations'. He was keenly alive to their generally prosaic and + irreverent character, and to the appearance of jugglery which was then + involved in them. He absolutely denied the good faith of all the persons + concerned. Mrs. Browning as absolutely believed it; and no compromise + between them was attainable, because, strangely enough, neither of them + admitted as possible that mediums or witnesses should deceive themselves. + The personal aspect which the question thus received brought it into + closer and more painful contact with their daily life. They might agree to + differ as to the abstract merits of spiritualism; but Mr. Browning could + not resign himself to his wife's trustful attitude towards some of the + individuals who at that moment represented it. He may have had no + substantial fear of her doing anything that could place her in their + power, though a vague dread of this seems to have haunted him; but he + chafed against the public association of her name with theirs. Both his + love for and his pride in her resented it. + </p> + <p> + He had subsided into a more judicial frame of mind when he wrote 'Sludge + the Medium', in which he says everything which can excuse the liar and, + what is still more remarkable, modify the lie. So far back as the autumn + of 1860 I heard him discuss the trickery which he believed himself to have + witnessed, as dispassionately as any other non-credulous person might have + done so. The experience must even before that have passed out of the + foreground of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, subject, for + many years, to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which would sweep over him + whenever the question of 'spirits' or 'spiritualism' was revived; and we + can only understand this in connection with the peculiar circumstances of + the case. With all his faith in the future, with all his constancy to the + past, the memory of pain was stronger in him than any other. A single + discordant note in the harmony of that married love, though merged in its + actual existence, would send intolerable vibrations through his + remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in this instance, that of + simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. Browning's refusal to + admit that disagreement was possible. She never believed in her husband's + disbelief; and he had been not unreasonably annoyed by her always assuming + it to be feigned. But his doubt of spiritualistic sincerity was not + feigned. She cannot have thought, and scarcely can have meant to say so. + She may have meant to say, 'You believe that these are tricks, but you + know that there is something real behind them;' and so far, if no farther, + she may have been in the right. Mr. Browning never denied the abstract + possibility of spiritual communication with either living or dead; he only + denied that such communication had ever been proved, or that any useful + end could be subserved by it. The tremendous potentialities of hypnotism + and thought-reading, now passing into the region of science, were not then + so remote but that an imagination like his must have foreshadowed them. + The natural basis of the seemingly supernatural had not yet entered into + discussion. He may, from the first, have suspected the existence of some + mysterious force, dangerous because not understood, and for this reason + doubly liable to fall into dangerous hands. And if this was so, he would + necessarily regard the whole system of manifestations with an apprehensive + hostility, which was not entire negation, but which rebelled against any + effort on the part of others, above all of those he loved, to interpret it + into assent. The pain and anger which could be aroused in him by an + indication on the part of a valued friend of even an impartial interest in + the subject points especially to the latter conclusion. + </p> + <p> + He often gave an instance of the tricks played in the name of spiritualism + on credulous persons, which may amuse those who have not yet heard it. I + give the story as it survives in the fresher memory of Mr. Val Prinsep, + who also received it from Mr. Browning. + </p> + <p> + 'At Florence lived a curious old savant who in his day was well known to + all who cared for art or history. I fear now few live who recollect + Kirkup. He was quite a mine of information on all kinds of forgotten lore. + It was he who discovered Giotto's portrait of Dante in the Bargello. + Speaking of some friend, he said, "He is a most ignorant fellow! Why, he + does not know how to cast a horoscope!" Of him Browning told me the + following story. Kirkup was much taken up with spiritualism, in which he + firmly believed. One day Browning called on him to borrow a book. He rang + loudly at the storey, for he knew Kirkup, like Landor, was quite deaf. To + his astonishment the door opened at once and Kirkup appeared. + </p> + <p> + '"Come in," he cried; "the spirits told me there was some one at the door. + Ah! I know you do not believe! Come and see. Mariana is in a trance!" + </p> + <p> + 'Browning entered. In the middle room, full of all kinds of curious + objects of "vertu", stood a handsome peasant girl, with her eyes fixed as + though she were in a trance. + </p> + <p> + '"You see, Browning," said Kirkup, "she is quite insensible, and has no + will of her own. Mariana, hold up your arm." + </p> + <p> + 'The woman slowly did as she was bid. + </p> + <p> + '"She cannot take it down till I tell her," cried Kirkup. + </p> + <p> + '"Very curious," observed Browning. "Meanwhile I have come to ask you to + lend me a book." + </p> + <p> + 'Kirkup, as soon as he was made to hear what book was wanted, said he + should be delighted. + </p> + <p> + '"Wait a bit. It is in the next room." + </p> + <p> + 'The old man shuffled out at the door. No sooner had he disappeared than + the woman turned to Browning, winked, and putting down her arm leaned it + on his shoulder. When Kirkup returned she resumed her position and rigid + look. + </p> + <p> + '"Here is the book," said Kirkup. "Isn't it wonderful?" he added, pointing + to the woman. + </p> + <p> + '"Wonderful," agreed Browning as he left the room. + </p> + <p> + 'The woman and her family made a good thing of poor Kirkup's + spiritualism.' + </p> + <p> + Something much more remarkable in reference to this subject happened to + the poet himself during his residence in Florence. It is related in a + letter to the 'Spectator', dated January 30, 1869, and signed J. S. K. + </p> + <p> + 'Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years + since, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at + Florence, was brought to his house without previous introduction, by an + intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric and + clairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed + scepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of + his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him + then and there, which he could hand to him, and which was in any way a + relic or memento. This Mr. Browning thought was perhaps because he + habitually wore no sort of trinket or ornament, not even a watchguard, and + might therefore turn out to be a safe challenge. But it so happened that, + by a curious accident, he was then wearing under his coat-sleeves some + gold wrist-studs which he had quite recently taken into wear, in the + absence (by mistake of a sempstress) of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had + never before worn them in Florence or elsewhere, and had found them in + some old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of these + studs he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand a + while, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning's face, and then he said, as if + much impressed, "C'equalche cosa che mi grida nell' orecchio 'Uccisione! + uccisione!'" ("There is something here which cries out in my ear, 'Murder! + murder!'") + </p> + <p> + '"And truly," says Mr. Browning, "those very studs were taken from the + dead body of a great uncle of mine who was violently killed on his estate + in St. Kitt's, nearly eighty years ago. . . . The occurrence of my great + uncle's murder was known only to myself of all men in Florence, as + certainly was also my possession of the studs."' + </p> + <p> + A letter from the poet, of July 21, 1883, affirms that the account is + correct in every particular, adding, 'My own explanation of the matter has + been that the shrewd Italian felt his way by the involuntary help of my + own eyes and face.' The story has been reprinted in the Reports of the + Psychical Society. + </p> + <p> + A pleasant piece of news came to brighten the January of 1858. Mr. Fox was + returned for Oldham, and at once wrote to announce the fact. He was + answered in a joint letter from Mr. and Mrs. Browning, interesting + throughout, but of which only the second part is quite suited for present + insertion. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Browning, who writes first and at most length, ends by saying she + must leave a space for Robert, that Mr. Fox may be compensated for reading + all she has had to say. The husband continues as follows: + </p> + <p> + . . . 'A space for Robert' who has taken a breathing space—hardly + more than enough—to recover from his delight; he won't say surprise, + at your letter, dear Mr. Fox. But it is all right and, like you, I wish + from my heart we could get close together again, as in those old days, and + what times we would have here in Italy! The realization of the children's + prayer of angels at the corner of your bed (i.e. sofa), one to read and + one (my wife) to write,* and both to guard you through the night of + lodging-keeper's extortions, abominable charges for firing, and so on. + (Observe, to call oneself 'an angel' in this land is rather humble, where + they are apt to be painted as plumed cutthroats or celestial police—you + say of Gabriel at his best and blithesomest, 'Shouldn't admire meeting <i>him</i> + in a narrow lane!') + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Fox much liked to be read to, and was in the habit + of writing his articles by dictation. +</pre> + <p> + I say this foolishly just because I can't trust myself to be earnest about + it. I would, you know, I would, always would, choose you out of the whole + English world to judge and correct what I write myself; my wife shall read + this and let it stand if I have told her so these twelve years—and + certainly I have not grown intellectually an inch over the good and kind + hand you extended over my head how many years ago! Now it goes over my + wife's too. + </p> + <p> + How was it Tottie never came here as she promised? Is it to be some other + time? Do think of Florence, if ever you feel chilly, and hear quantities + about the Princess Royal's marriage, and want a change. I hate the thought + of leaving Italy for one day more than I can help—and satisfy my + English predilections by newspapers and a book or two. One gets nothing of + that kind here, but the stuff out of which books grow,—it lies about + one's feet indeed. Yet for me, there would be one book better than any now + to be got here or elsewhere, and all out of a great English head and + heart,—those 'Memoirs' you engaged to give us. Will you give us + them? + </p> + <p> + Goodbye now—if ever the whim strikes you to 'make beggars happy' + remember us. + </p> + <p> + Love to Tottie, and love and gratitude to you, dear Mr. Fox, From yours + ever affectionately, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + In the summer of this year, the poet with his wife and child joined his + father and sister at Havre. It was the last time they were all to be + together. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 13 + </h2> + <h3> + 1858-1861 + </h3> + <p> + Mrs. Browning's Illness—Siena—Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. + Leighton —Mrs. Browning's Letters continued—Walter Savage + Landor—Winter in Rome—Mr. Val Prinsep—Friends in Rome: + Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright—Multiplying Social Relations—Massimo + d'Azeglio—Siena again—Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's + Sister—Mr. Browning's Occupations—Madame du Quaire—Mrs. + Browning's last Illness and Death. + </p> + <p> + I cannot quite ascertain, though it might seem easy to do so, whether Mr. + and Mrs. Browning remained in Florence again till the summer of 1859, or + whether the intervening months were divided between Florence and Rome; but + some words in their letters favour the latter supposition. We hear of them + in September from Mr. Val Prinsep, in Siena or its neighbourhood; with Mr. + and Mrs. Story in an adjacent villa, and Walter Savage Landor in a + 'cottage' close by. How Mr. Landor found himself of the party belongs to a + little chapter in Mr. Browning's history for which I quote Mr. Colvin's + words.* He was then living at Fiesole with his family, very unhappily, as + we all know; and Mr. Colvin relates how he had thrice left his villa + there, determined to live in Florence alone; and each time been brought + back to the nominal home where so little kindness awaited him. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * 'Life of Landor', p. 209. +</pre> + <p> + '. . . The fourth time he presented himself in the house of Mr. Browning + with only a few pauls in his pocket, declaring that nothing should ever + induce him to return. + </p> + <p> + 'Mr. Browning, an interview with the family at the villa having satisfied + him that reconciliation or return was indeed past question, put himself at + once in communication with Mr. Forster and with Landor's brothers in + England. The latter instantly undertook to supply the needs of their + eldest brother during the remainder of his life. Thenceforth an income + sufficient for his frugal wants was forwarded regularly for his use + through the friend who had thus come forward at his need. To Mr. + Browning's respectful and judicious guidance Landor showed himself docile + from the first. Removed from the inflictions, real and imaginary, of his + life at Fiesole, he became another man, and at times still seemed to those + about him like the old Landor at his best. It was in July, 1859, that the + new arrangements for his life were made. The remainder of that summer he + spent at Siena, first as the guest of Mr. Story, the American sculptor and + poet, next in a cottage rented for him by Mr. Browning near his own. In + the autumn of the same year Landor removed to a set of apartments in the + Via Nunziatina in Florence, close to the Casa Guidi, in a house kept by a + former servant of Mrs. Browning's, an Englishwoman married to an Italian.* + Here he continued to live during the five years that yet remained to him.' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Wilson, Mrs. Browning's devoted maid, and another most + faithful servant + of hers and her husband's, Ferdinando Romagnoli. +</pre> + <p> + Mr. Landor's presence is also referred to, with the more important + circumstance of a recent illness of Mrs. Browning's, in two characteristic + and interesting letters of this period, one written by Mr. Browning to + Frederic Leighton, the other by his wife to her sister-in-law. Mr.— + now Sir F.— Leighton had been studying art during the previous + winter in Italy. + </p> + <p> + Kingdom of Piedmont, Siena: Oct. 9, '59. + </p> + <p> + 'My dear Leighton—I hope—and think—you know what delight + it gave me to hear from you two months ago. I was in great trouble at the + time about my wife who was seriously ill. As soon as she could bear + removal we brought her to a villa here. She slowly recovered and is at + last <i>well</i> —I believe—but weak still and requiring more + attention than usual. We shall be obliged to return to Rome for the winter—not + choosing to risk losing what we have regained with some difficulty. Now + you know why I did not write at once—and may imagine why, having + waited so long, I put off telling you for a week or two till I could say + certainly what we do with ourselves. If any amount of endeavour could + induce you to join us there—Cartwright, Russell, the Vatican and all—and + if such a step were not inconsistent with your true interests—you + should have it: but I know very well that you love Italy too much not to + have had weighty reasons for renouncing her at present—and I want + your own good and not my own contentment in the matter. Wherever you are, + be sure I shall follow your proceedings with deep and true interest. I + heard of your successes—and am now anxious to know how you get on + with the great picture, the 'Ex voto'—if it does not prove full of + beauty and power, two of us will be shamed, that's all! But <i>I</i> don't + fear, mind! Do keep me informed of your progress, from time to time—a + few lines will serve—and then I shall slip some day into your + studio, and buffet the piano, without having grown a stranger. Another + thing—do take proper care of your health, and exercise yourself; + give those vile indigestions no chance against you; keep up your spirits, + and be as distinguished and happy as God meant you should. Can I do + anything for you at Rome—not to say, Florence? We go thither (i.e. + to Florence) to-morrow, stay there a month, probably, and then take the + Siena road again.' + </p> + <p> + The next paragraph refers to some orders for photographs, and is not + specially interesting. + </p> + <p> + Cartwright arrived here a fortnight ago—very pleasant it was to see + him: he left for Florence, stayed a day or two and returned to Mrs. + Cartwright (who remained at the Inn) and they all departed prosperously + yesterday for Rome. Odo Russell spent two days here on his way thither—we + liked him much. Prinsep and Jones—do you know them?—are in the + town. The Storys have passed the summer in the villa opposite,—and + no less a lion than dear old Landor is in a house a few steps off. I take + care of him—his amiable family having clawed him a little too + sharply: so strangely do things come about! I mean his Fiesole 'family'—a + trifle of wife, sons and daughter—not his English relatives, who are + generous and good in every way. + </p> + <p> + Take any opportunity of telling dear Mrs. Sartoris (however unnecessarily) + that I and my wife remember her with the old feeling—I trust she is + well and happy to heart's content. Pen is quite well and rejoicing just + now in a Sardinian pony on which he gallops like Puck on a dragon-fly's + back. My wife's kind regard and best wishes go with those of, Dear + Leighton, yours affectionately ever, R. Browning. + </p> + <p> + October 1859. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. to Miss Browning. + </p> + <p> + '. . . After all, it is not a cruel punishment to have to go to Rome again + this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and we did wish to + keep quiet this winter,—the taste for constant wanderings having + passed away as much for me as for Robert. We begin to see that by no + possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end—and + then we don't work so well, don't live to as much use either for ourselves + or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend to live at + Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, what with + going away for the summer and going away for the winter. It's too true. + It's the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there is impossible for + us, almost just as to live out of Italy at all, is impossible for us. It + isn't caprice on our part. Siena pleases us very much—the silence + and repose have been heavenly things to me, and the country is very pretty—though + no more than pretty—nothing marked or romantic—no mountains, + except so far off as to be like a cloud only on clear days—and no + water. Pretty dimpled ground, covered with low vineyards, purple hills, + not high, with the sunsets clothing them. . . . We shall not leave + Florence till November—Robert must see Mr. Landor (his adopted son, + Sarianna) settled in his new apartments with Wilson for a duenna. It's an + excellent plan for him and not a bad one for Wilson. . . . Forgive me if + Robert has told you this already. Dear darling Robert amuses me by talking + of his "gentleness and sweetness". A most courteous and refined gentleman + he is, of course, and very affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but + of self-restraint, he has not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. + Wilson will run many risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. + What do you say to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like + what's on it? And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now have been + already accused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion (though there + was talk of the probability of Mr. Landor's "throat being cut in his + sleep"—) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him—and + the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, to beguile + the time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. He laughs + carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days he will have to write + an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me.' + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome: + </p> + <p> + '. . . We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment + before it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look-out into a little + garden, quiet and cheerful, and he doesn't mind a situation rather out of + the way. He pays four pounds ten (English) the month. Wilson has thirty + pounds a year for taking care of him—which sounds a good deal, but + it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionate + impulses—but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. Nothing + coheres in him—either in his opinions, or, I fear, his affections. + It isn't age—he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. + Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at + least, and I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert + always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any + contemporary. At present Landor is very fond of him—but I am quite + prepared for his turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who + has been so devoted for years and years. Only one isn't kind for what one + gets by it, or there wouldn't be much kindness in this world. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning always declared that his wife could impute evil to no one, + that she was a living denial of that doctrine of original sin to which her + Christianity pledged her; and the great breadth and perfect charity of her + views habitually justified the assertion; but she evidently possessed a + keen insight into character, which made her complete suspension of + judgment on the subject of Spiritualism very difficult to understand. + </p> + <p> + The spiritualistic coterie had found a satisfactory way of explaining Mr. + Browning's antagonistic attitude towards it. He was jealous, it was said, + because the Spirits on one occasion had dropped a crown on to his wife's + head and none on to his own. The first instalment of his long answer to + this grotesque accusation appears in a letter of Mrs. Browning's, probably + written in the course of the winter of 1859-60. + </p> + <p> + '. . . My brother George sent me a number of the "National Magazine" with + my face in it, after Marshall Wood's medallion. My comfort is that my + greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not go far + with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have its due + weight in arresting the sale of "Aurora Leigh" from henceforth. You never + saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman with the neck of a + vicious bull. . . . Still, I am surprised, I own, at the amount of + success, and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about it, far more + than if it all related to a book of his own. The form of the story, and + also, something in the philosophy, seem to have caught the crowd. As to + the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not so + blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . Give Peni's and my love to the + dearest 'nonno' (grandfather) whose sublime unselfishness and want of + common egotism presents such a contrast to what is here. Tell him I often + think of him, and always with touched feeling. (When <i>he</i> is + eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or humbled by the + spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long life's ungoverned + will.) May God bless him!—. . . Robert has made his third bust + copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are finished—it's + only matter of education. When the power of execution is achieved, he will + try at something original. Then reading hurts him; as long as I have known + him he has not been able to read long at a time—he can do it now + better than at the beginning. The consequence of which is that an active + occupation is salvation to him. . . . Nobody exactly understands him + except me, who am in the inside of him and hear him breathe. For the + peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloud with me and can't + stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems done this winter very much, and + here was a bright room with three windows consecrated to his use. But he + had a room all last summer, and did nothing. Then, he worked himself out + by riding for three or four hours together—there has been little + poetry done since last winter, when he did much. He was not inclined to + write this winter. The modelling combines body-work and soul-work, and the + more tired he has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more + he has exulted and been happy. So I couldn't be much in opposition against + the sculpture—I couldn't in fact at all. He has material for a + volume, and will work at it this summer, he says. + </p> + <p> + 'His power is much in advance of "Strafford", which is his poorest work of + art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of the pen. + </p> + <p> + 'At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, and + for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public—no other word. + He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which I + acknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I wonder + if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, + an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, the other day, the + American minister, whether "Robert was not an American." The minister + answered—"is it possible that <i>you</i> ask me this? Why, there is + not so poor a village in the United States, where they would not tell you + that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were sorry he was + not an American." Very pretty of the American minister, was it not?—and + literally true, besides. . . . Ah, dear Sarianna—I don't complain + for myself of an unappreciating public. I <i>have no reason</i>. But, just + for <i>that</i> reason, I complain more about Robert—only he does + not hear me complain—to <i>you</i> I may say, that the blindness, + deafness and stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Of + course Milsand had heard his name—well the contrary would have been + strange. Robert <i>is</i>. All England can't prevent his existence, I + suppose. But nobody there, except a small knot of pre-Raffaellite men, + pretend to do him justice. Mr. Forster has done the best,—in the + press. As a sort of lion, Robert has his range in society—and—for + the rest, you should see Chapman's returns!—While, in America he is + a power, a writer, a poet—he is read—he lives in the hearts of + the people. + </p> + <p> + '"Browning readings" here in Boston—"Browning evenings" there. For + the rest, the English hunt lions, too, Sarianna, but their lions are + chiefly chosen among lords and railway kings. . . .' + </p> + <p> + We cannot be surprised at Mrs. Browning's desire for a more sustained + literary activity on her husband's part. We learn from his own subsequent + correspondence that he too regarded the persevering exercise of his poetic + faculty as almost a religious obligation. But it becomes the more apparent + that the restlessness under which he was now labouring was its own excuse; + and that its causes can have been no mystery even to those 'outside' him. + The life and climate of Italy were beginning to undermine his strength. We + owe it perhaps to the great and sorrowful change, which was then drawing + near, that the full power of work returned to him. + </p> + <p> + During the winter of 1859-60, Mr. Val Prinsep was in Rome. He had gone to + Siena with Mr. Burne Jones, bearing an introduction from Rossetti to Mr. + Browning and his wife; and the acquaintance with them was renewed in the + ensuing months. Mr. Prinsep had acquired much knowledge of the popular, + hence picturesque aspects of Roman life, through a French artist long + resident in the city; and by the help of the two young men Mr. Browning + was also introduced to them. The assertion that during his married life he + never dined away from home must be so far modified, that he sometimes + joined Mr. Prinsep and his friend in a Bohemian meal, at an inn near the + Porta Pinciana which they much frequented; and he gained in this manner + some distinctive experiences which he liked long afterwards to recall. I + am again indebted to Mr. Prinsep for a description of some of these. + </p> + <p> + 'The first time he honoured us was on an evening when the poet of the + quarter of the "Monte" had announced his intention of coming to challenge + a rival poet to a poetical contest. Such contests are, or were, common in + Rome. In old times the Monte and the Trastevere, the two great quarters of + the eternal city, held their meetings on the Ponte Rotto. The contests + were not confined to the effusions of the poetical muse. Sometimes it was + a strife between two lute-players, sometimes guitarists would engage, and + sometimes mere wrestlers. The rivalry was so keen that the adverse parties + finished up with a general fight. So the Papal Government had forbidden + the meetings on the old bridge. But still each quarter had its pet + champions, who were wont to meet in private before an appreciative, but + less excitable audience, than in olden times. + </p> + <p> + 'Gigi (the host) had furnished a first-rate dinner, and his usual tap of + excellent wine. ('Vino del Popolo' he called it.) The 'Osteria' had + filled; the combatants were placed opposite each other on either side of a + small table on which stood two 'mezzi'—long glass bottles holding + about a quart apiece. For a moment the two poets eyed each other like two + cocks seeking an opportunity to engage. Then through the crowd a stalwart + carpenter, a constant attendant of Gigi's, elbowed his way. He leaned over + the table with a hand on each shoulder, and in a neatly turned couplet he + then addressed the rival bards. + </p> + <p> + '"You two," he said, "for the honour of Rome, must do your best, for there + is now listening to you a great Poet from England." + </p> + <p> + 'Having said this, he bowed to Browning, and swaggered back to his place + in the crowd, amid the applause of the on-lookers. + </p> + <p> + 'It is not necessary to recount how the two Improvisatori poetized, even + if I remembered, which I do not. + </p> + <p> + 'On another occasion, when Browning and Story were dining with us, we had + a little orchestra (mandolins, two guitars, and a lute,) to play to us. + The music consisted chiefly of well-known popular airs. While they were + playing with great fervour the Hymn to Garibaldi—an air strictly + forbidden by the Papal Government, three blows at the door resounded + through the 'Osteria'. The music stopped in a moment. I saw Gigi was very + pale as he walked down the room. There was a short parley at the door. It + opened, and a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes marched solemnly up to the + counter from which drink was supplied. There was a dead silence while Gigi + supplied them with large measures of wine, which the gendarmes leisurely + imbibed. Then as solemnly they marched out again, with their heads well in + the air, looking neither to the right nor the left. Most discreet if not + incorruptible guardians of the peace! When the door was shut the music + began again; but Gigi was so earnest in his protestations, that my friend + Browning suggested we should get into carriages and drive to see the + Coliseum by moonlight. And so we sallied forth, to the great relief of + poor Gigi, to whom it meant, if reported, several months of imprisonment, + and complete ruin. + </p> + <p> + 'In after-years Browning frequently recounted with delight this night + march. + </p> + <p> + '"We drove down the Corso in two carriages," he would say. "In one were + our musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people all asked, 'who + are these who make all this parade?' At last some one said, 'Without doubt + these are the fellows who won the lottery,' and everybody cried, 'Of + course these are the lucky men who have won.'"' + </p> + <p> + The two persons whom Mr. Browning saw most, and most intimately, during + this and the ensuing winter, were probably Mr. and Mrs. Story. Allusion + has already been made to the opening of the acquaintance at the Baths of + Lucca in 1853, to its continuance in Rome in '53 and '54, and to the + artistic pursuits which then brought the two men into close and frequent + contact with each other. These friendly relations were cemented by their + children, who were of about the same age; and after Mrs. Browning's death, + Miss Browning took her place in the pleasant intercourse which renewed + itself whenever their respective visits to Italy and to England again + brought the two families together. A no less lasting and truly + affectionate intimacy was now also growing up with Mr. Cartwright and his + wife—the Cartwrights (of Aynhoe) of whom mention was made in the + Siena letter to F. Leighton; and this too was subsequently to include + their daughter, now Mrs. Guy Le Strange, and Mr. Browning's sister. I + cannot quite ascertain when the poet first knew Mr. Odo Russell, and his + mother, Lady William Russell, who was also during this, or at all events + the following winter, in Rome; and whom afterwards in London he regularly + visited until her death; but the acquaintance was already entering on the + stage in which it would spread as a matter of course through every branch + of the family. His first country visit, when he had returned to England, + was paid with his son to Woburn Abbey. + </p> + <p> + We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficulties of + Mr. Browning's biography: that of giving a sufficient idea of the growing + extent and growing variety of his social relations. It is evident from the + fragments of his wife's correspondence that during, as well as after, his + married life, he always and everywhere knew everyone whom it could + interest him to know. These acquaintances constantly ripened into + friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They were necessarily often + marked by interesting circumstances or distinctive character. To follow + them one by one, would add not chapters, but volumes, to our history. The + time has not yet come at which this could even be undertaken; and any + attempt at systematic selection would create a false impression of the + whole. I must therefore be still content to touch upon such passages of + Mr. Browning's social experience as lie in the course of a comparatively + brief record; leaving all such as are not directly included in it to speak + indirectly for themselves. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859: + </p> + <p> + 'Massimo d'Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noble head + of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personal + distinction you will guess at,* though I don't pretend to have been + insensible to that.' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company + with the young Prince of Wales. +</pre> + <p> + Dr.—afterwards Cardinal—Manning was also among the + distinguished or interesting persons whom they knew in Rome. + </p> + <p> + Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or 1860, + when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once more in + contemplation. + </p> + <p> + Casa Guidi. + </p> + <p> + 'My dearest Sarianna,—I am delighted to say that we have arrived, + and see our dear Florence—the Queen of Italy, after all . . . A + comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he + ever was known to look—and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his + beard . . . which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the + argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole + physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed—let me tell you + how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his + arrival in Rome, from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit + of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard . . . whiskers and + all!! I <i>cried</i> when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have + gone into hysterics and still been reasonable—for no human being was + ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered + heart and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he + didn't let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his + looking-glass) he yielded the point,—and the beard grew—but it + grew white—which was the just punishment of the gods—our sins + leave their traces. + </p> + <p> + 'Well, poor darling Robert won't shock you after all—you can't + choose but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he + was not changed for the intermediate years. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, and from + thence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxiety + concerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook,* then attacked by a + fatal disease. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * The name was afterwards changed to Altham. +</pre> + <p> + '. . . There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my precious + Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it is—be sure + that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful temperament, and I + never could go on systematically making the worst of any case. I bear up + here for a few days, and then comes the expectation of a letter, which is + hard. I fight with it for Robert's sake, but all the work I put myself to + do does not hinder a certain effect. She is confined to her bed almost + wholly and suffers acutely. . . . In fact, I am living from day to day, on + the merest crumbs of hope—on the daily bread which is very bitter. + Of course it has shaken me a good deal, and interfered with the advantages + of the summer, but that's the least. Poor Robert's scheme for me of + perfect repose has scarcely been carried out. . . .' + </p> + <p> + This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just the + circumstance from which some comfort had been expected—the second + postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears which + might have found a moment's forgetfulness in the longer absence of news, + were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion the + suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife's desire, + had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had + come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and that the + brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to + convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the + authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, and his + position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. + Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning always + believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his wife's + life, though it is also possible that her already lowered vitality + increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her own casual + allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested progress, if + not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been a mistake, that + active signs of consumption were apparent in her even before the illness + of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end. She was + completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse, during the greater + part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome. + </p> + <p> + She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning in April, + in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy. + </p> + <p> + '. . . In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive + than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago. . . . I believe people in + general would think the same exactly. As to the modelling—well, I + told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. But + it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great + deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the + clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert + is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with + him on this point, for I don't think him right; that is to say, it would + not be right for me . . . But Robert waits for an inclination, works by + fits and starts; he can't do otherwise he says, and his head is full of + ideas which are to come out in clay or marble. I yearn for the poems, but + he leaves that to me for the present. . . . You will think Robert looking + very well when you see him; indeed, you may judge by the photographs + meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used to forbid the moustache. I + insisted as long as I could, but all artists were against me, and I + suppose that the bare upper lip does not harmonise with the beard. He + keeps the hair now closer, and the beard is pointed. . . . As to the moony + whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful, <i>I</i> think, but then I think + him all beautiful, and always. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December. + She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her for + some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony + was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with her + brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in her + sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, and all + that 'conquers death'. He little knew how soon he would need the same + comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife's poems; + and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said, as so many + persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers, he made this + characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some years afterwards + to another friend: 'You are wrong—quite wrong—she has genius; + I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel + who plots and plans, and tries to build up something—he wants to + make you see it as he sees it—shows you one point of view, carries + you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to + understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off + a little star—that's the difference between us. The true creative + power is hers, not mine.' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New + Castle. +</pre> + <p> + Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after their return + to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection to which she + was subject; and a new doctor who was called in discovered grave mischief + at the lungs, which she herself had long believed to be existent or + impending. But the attack was comparatively, indeed actually, slight; and + an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning, dated June 7, confirms + what her family and friends have since asserted, that it was the death of + Cavour which gave her the final blow. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or + hand to name 'Cavour'. That great soul which meditated and made Italy has + gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, + he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the + greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a man!' + </p> + <p> + Her death was signalized by the appearance—this time, I am told, + unexpected—of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the + earth as to come into contact with it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 14 + </h2> + <h3> + 1861-1863 + </h3> + <p> + Miss Blagden—Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. + Leighton—His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies—Establishment + in London—Plan of Life—Letter to Madame du Quaire—Miss + Arabel Barrett—Biarritz—Letters to Miss Blagden—Conception + of 'The Ring and the Book'—Biographical Indiscretion—New + Edition of his Works—Mr. and Mrs. Procter. + </p> + <p> + The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning in + this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden—Isa Blagden, as she + was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her could + hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet's life; but the + friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning brings + her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. She was for many + years a centre of English society in Florence; for her genial, hospitable + nature, as well as literary tastes (she wrote one or two novels, I believe + not without merit), secured her the acquaintance of many interesting + persons, some of whom occasionally made her house their home; and the + evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo live pleasantly in + the remembrance of those of our older generation who were permitted to + share in them. + </p> + <p> + She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, and induced his + father to spend his nights under her roof, while the last painful duties + detained him in Florence. He at least gave her cause to deny, what has + been so often affirmed, that great griefs are necessarily silent. She + always spoke of this period as her 'apocalyptic month', so deeply poetic + were the ravings which alternated with the simple human cry of the + desolate heart: 'I want her, I want her!' But the ear which received these + utterances has long been closed in death. The only written outbursts of + Mr. Browning's frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, to his sister, + and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent loss most naturally + invoked them, and who has since thought best, so far as rested with her, + to destroy the letters in which they were contained. It is enough to know + by simple statement that he then suffered as he did. Life conquers Death + for most of us; whether or not 'nature, art, and beauty' assist in the + conquest. It was bound to conquer in Mr. Browning's case: first through + his many-sided vitality; and secondly, through the special motive for + living and striving which remained to him in his son. This note is struck + in two letters which are given me to publish, written about three weeks + after Mrs. Browning's death; and we see also that by this time his manhood + was reacting against the blow, and bracing itself with such consoling + remembrance as the peace and painlessness of his wife's last moments could + afford to him. + </p> + <p> + Florence: July 19, '61. + </p> + <p> + Dear Leighton,—It is like your old kindness to write to me and to + say what you do—I know you feel for me. I can't write about it—but + there were many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day—there + seemed no pain, and (what she would have felt most) the knowledge of + separation from us was spared her. I find these things a comfort indeed. + </p> + <p> + I shall go away from Italy for many a year—to Paris, then London for + a day or two just to talk with her sister—but if I can see you it + will be a great satisfaction. Don't fancy I am 'prostrated', I have enough + to do for the boy and myself in carrying out her wishes. He is better than + one would have thought, and behaves dearly to me. Everybody has been very + kind. + </p> + <p> + Tell dear Mrs. Sartoris that I know her heart and thank her with all mine. + After my day or two at London I shall go to some quiet place in France to + get right again and then stay some time at Paris in order to find out + leisurely what it will be best to do for Peni—but eventually I shall + go to England, I suppose. I don't mean to live with anybody, even my own + family, but to occupy myself thoroughly, seeing dear friends, however, + like you. God bless you. Yours ever affectionately, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + The second is addressed to Miss Haworth. + </p> + <p> + Florence: July 20, 1861. + </p> + <p> + My dear Friend,—I well know you feel as you say, for her once and + for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you + something perhaps—and one day I shall see you and be able to tell + you myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very + little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of + cold and cough she was subject to—had no presentiment of the result + whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about + to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was 'better', 'quite + comfortable—if I would but come to bed,' to within a few minutes of + the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning + of the week's illness—but when I reasoned about it, there was no + justifying fear—she said on the last evening 'it is merely the old + attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago—there is no + doubt I shall soon recover,' and we talked over plans for the summer, and + next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed—so little + reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept + heavily, and brokenly—that was the bad sign—but then she would + sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. + At four o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid and + sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, 'Well, + you <i>are</i> determined to make an exaggerated case of it!' Then came + what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer—the most + perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. + Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's—and in a + few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so + sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was + no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God + took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy + bed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by her + earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have + been aware of our parting's approach—but she was quite conscious, + had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in the + next room. Her last word was when I asked 'How do you feel?' —'Beautiful.' + You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to attend to <i>at once</i>—her + child to care for, educate, establish properly; and my own life to fulfil + as properly,—all just as she would require were she here. I shall + leave Italy altogether for years—go to London for a few days' talk + with Arabel—then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what + will be the best for Peni—but no more 'housekeeping' for me, even + with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope—but my root is taken and + remains. + </p> + <p> + I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always be + grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did. + </p> + <p> + She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if one + consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. I + have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well—very + dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can't know his + loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine—he will want what + he never had—that is, for the time when he could be helped by her + wisdom, and genius and piety—I <i>have</i> had everything and shall + not forget. + </p> + <p> + God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa goes + with me—dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us + were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day or + two before the end—she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace + for you,—Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at + 151, rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, + Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought + less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, I + believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men. His + natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. At about the + end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied by Miss + Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself must soon + have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on the subject + of his wife's provisional disinterment,* in a manner which shows her to + have been on the spot. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Required for the subsequent placing of the monument + designed by F. Leighton. +</pre> + <p> + Sept. '61. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful + preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded + with,—will you do—all you can—suggest every regard to + decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of + that man of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure—I + rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence + when the time shall come—a word may be invaluable. If there is any + show made, or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had + left the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, + carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won't + think any more of it—now—at least. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of the + occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects itself + with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, which was a + marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank, as his wife had + done, from the 'earth side' of the portentous change; but truth compels me + to own that her infinite pity had little or no part in his attitude + towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed, held nothing + of the person whose earthly vesture it had been. He had no sympathy for + the still human tenderness with which so many of us regard the mortal + remains of those they have loved, or with the solemn or friendly interest + in which that tenderness so often reflects itself in more neutral minds. + He would claim all respect for the corpse, but he would turn away from it. + Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter to one of his + brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, in reference to his wife's + monument, with which Mr. Barrett had professed himself pleased. His tone + is characterized by an almost religious reverence for the memory which + that monument enshrines. He nevertheless writes: + </p> + <p> + 'I hope to see it one day—and, although I have no kind of concern as + to where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown, yet, if my fortune be + such, and my survivors be not unduly troubled, I should like them to lie + in the place I have retained there. It is no matter, however.' + </p> + <p> + The letter is dated October 19, 1866. He never saw Florence again. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning spent two months with his father and sister at St.-Enogat, + near Dinard, from which place the letter to Miss Blagden was written; and + then proceeded to London, where his wife's sister, Miss Arabel Barrett, + was living. He had declared in his first grief that he would never keep + house again, and he began his solitary life in lodgings which at his + request she had engaged for him; but the discomfort of this arrangement + soon wearied him of it; and before many months had passed, he had sent to + Florence for his furniture, and settled himself in the house in Warwick + Crescent, which possessed, besides other advantages, that of being close + to Delamere Terrace, where Miss Barrett had taken up her abode. + </p> + <p> + This first period of Mr. Browning's widowed life was one of unutterable + dreariness, in which the smallest and yet most unconquerable element was + the prosaic ugliness of everything which surrounded him. It was fifteen + years since he had spent a winter in England; he had never spent one in + London. There had been nothing to break for him the transition from the + stately beauty of Florence to the impressions and associations of the + Harrow and Edgware Roads, and of Paddington Green. He might have escaped + this neighbourhood by way of Westbourne Terrace; but his walks constantly + led him in an easterly direction; and whether in an unconscious hugging of + his chains, or, as was more probable, from the desire to save time, he + would drag his aching heart and reluctant body through the sordidness or + the squalor of this short cut, rather than seek the pleasanter + thoroughfares which were open to him. Even the prettiness of Warwick + Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphere of low or ugly life + which encompassed it on almost every side. His haunting dream was one day + to have done with it all; to have fulfilled his mission with his son, + educated him, launched him in a suitable career, and to go back to + sunshine and beauty again. He learned by degrees to regard London as a + home; as the only fitting centre for the varied energies which were + reviving in him; to feel pride and pleasure in its increasingly + picturesque character. He even learned to appreciate the outlook from his + house—that 'second from the bridge' of which so curious a + presentment had entered into one of the poems of the 'Men and Women'*—in + spite of the refuse of humanity which would sometimes yell at the street + corner, or fling stones at his plate-glass. But all this had to come; and + it is only fair to admit that twenty-nine years ago the beauties of which + I have spoken were in great measure to come also. He could not then in any + mood have exclaimed, as he did to a friend two or three years ago: 'Shall + we not have a pretty London if things go on in this way?' They were + driving on the Kensington side of Hyde Park. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * 'How it strikes a Contemporary'. +</pre> + <p> + The paternal duty, which, so much against his inclination, had established + Mr. Browning in England, would in every case have lain very near to his + conscience and to his heart; but it especially urged itself upon them + through the absence of any injunction concerning it on his wife's part. No + farewell words of hers had commended their child to his father's love and + care; and though he may, for the moment, have imputed this fact to + unconsciousness of her approaching death, his deeper insight soon + construed the silence into an expression of trust, more binding upon him + than the most earnest exacted promise could have been. The growing boy's + education occupied a considerable part of his time and thoughts, for he + had determined not to send him to school, but, as far as possible, himself + prepare him for the University. He must also, in some degree, have + supervised his recreations. He had therefore, for the present, little + leisure for social distractions, and probably at first very little + inclination for them. His plan of life and duty, and the sense of + responsibility attendant on it, had been communicated to Madame du Quaire + in a letter written also from St.-Enogat. + </p> + <p> + M. Chauvin, St.-Enogat pres Dinard, Ile et Vilaine: Aug. 17, '61. + </p> + <p> + Dear Madame du Quaire,—I got your note on Sunday afternoon, but + found myself unable to call on you as I had been intending to do. Next + morning I left for this place (near St.-Malo, but I give what they say is + the proper address). I want first to beg you to forgive my withholding so + long your little oval mirror—it is safe in Paris, and I am vexed at + having stupidly forgotten to bring it when I tried to see you. I shall + stay here till the autumn sets in, then return to Paris for a few days—the + first of which will be the best, if I can see you in the course of it—afterward, + I settle in London. + </p> + <p> + When I meant to pass the winter in Paris, I hoped, the first thing almost, + to be near you—it now seems to me, however, that the best course for + the Boy is to begin a good English education at once. I shall take quiet + lodgings (somewhere near Kensington Gardens, I rather think) and get a + Tutor. I want, if I can (according to my present very imperfect knowledge) + to get the poor little fellow fit for the University without passing thro' + a Public School. I, myself, could never have done much by either process, + but he is made differently—imitates and emulates and all that. How I + should be grateful if you would help me by any word that should occur to + you! I may easily do wrong, begin ill, thro' too much anxiety—perhaps, + however, all may be easier than seems to me just now. + </p> + <p> + I shall have a great comfort in talking to you—this writing is + stiff, ineffectual work. Pen is very well, cheerful now,—has his + little horse here. The place is singularly unspoiled, fresh and + picturesque, and lovely to heart's content. I wish you were here!—and + if you knew exactly what such a wish means, you would need no assuring in + addition that I am Yours affectionately and gratefully ever Robert + Browning. + </p> + <p> + The person of whom he saw most was his sister-in-law, whom he visited, I + believe, every evening. Miss Barrett had been a favourite sister of Mrs. + Browning's, and this constituted a sufficient title to her husband's + affection. But she was also a woman to be loved for her own sake. Deeply + religious and very charitable, she devoted herself to visiting the poor—a + form of philanthropy which was then neither so widespread nor so + fashionable as it has since become; and she founded, in 1850, the first + Training School or Refuge which had ever existed for destitute little + girls. It need hardly be added that Mr. and Miss Browning co-operated in + the work. The little poem, 'The Twins', republished in 1855 in 'Men and + Women', was first printed (with Mrs. Browning's 'Plea for the Ragged + Schools of London') for the benefit of this Refuge. It was in Miss + Barrett's company that Mr. Browning used to attend the church of Mr. + Thomas Jones, to a volume of whose 'Sermons and Addresses' he wrote a + short introduction in 1884. + </p> + <p> + On February 15, 1862, he writes again to Miss Blagden. + </p> + <p> + Feb. 15, '62. + </p> + <p> + '. . . While I write, my heart is sore for a great calamity just befallen + poor Rossetti, which I only heard of last night—his wife, who had + been, as an invalid, in the habit of taking laudanum, swallowed an + overdose—was found by the poor fellow on his return from the + working-men's class in the evening, under the effects of it—help was + called in, the stomach-pump used; but she died in the night, about a week + ago. There has hardly been a day when I have not thought, "if I can, + to-morrow, I will go and see him, and thank him for his book, and return + his sister's poems." Poor, dear fellow! . . . + </p> + <p> + '. . . Have I not written a long letter, for me who hate the sight of a + pen now, and see a pile of unanswered things on the table before me? + —on this very table. Do you tell me in turn all about yourself. I + shall be interested in the minutest thing you put down. What sort of + weather is it? You cannot but be better at your new villa than in the + large solitary one. There I am again, going up the winding way to it, and + seeing the herbs in red flower, and the butterflies on the top of the wall + under the olive-trees! Once more, good-bye. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The hatred of writing of which he here speaks refers probably to the class + of letters which he had lately been called upon to answer, and which must + have been painful in proportion to the kindness by which they were + inspired. But it returned to him many years later, in simple weariness of + the mental and mechanical act, and with such force that he would often + answer an unimportant note in person, rather than make the seemingly much + smaller exertion of doing so with his pen. It was the more remarkable + that, with the rarest exceptions, he replied to every letter which came to + him. + </p> + <p> + The late summer of the former year had been entirely unrefreshing, in + spite of his acknowledgment of the charms of St.-Enogat. There was more + distraction and more soothing in the stay at Cambo and Biarritz, which was + chosen for the holiday of 1862. Years afterwards, when the thought of + Italy carried with it less longing and even more pain, Mr. Browning would + speak of a visit to the Pyrenees, if not a residence among them, as one of + the restful possibilities of his later and freer life. He wrote to Miss + Blagden: + </p> + <p> + Biarritz, Maison Gastonbide: Sept. 19, '62. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I stayed a month at green pleasant little Cambo, and then came here + from pure inability to go elsewhere—St.-Jean de Luz, on which I had + reckoned, being still fuller of Spaniards who profit by the new railway. + This place is crammed with gay people of whom I see nothing but their + outsides. The sea, sands, and view of the Spanish coast and mountains, are + superb and this house is on the town's outskirts. I stay till the end of + the month, then go to Paris, and then get my neck back into the old collar + again. Pen has managed to get more enjoyment out of his holiday than + seemed at first likely—there was a nice French family at Cambo with + whom he fraternised, riding with the son and escorting the daughter in her + walks. His red cheeks look as they should. For me, I have got on by having + a great read at Euripides—the one book I brought with me, besides + attending to my own matters, my new poem that is about to be; and of which + the whole is pretty well in my head,—the Roman murder story you + know. + </p> + <p> + '. . . How I yearn, yearn for Italy at the close of my life! . . .' + </p> + <p> + The 'Roman murder story' was, I need hardly say, to become 'The Ring and + the Book'. + </p> + <p> + It has often been told, though with curious confusion as regards the date, + how Mr. Browning picked up the original parchment-bound record of the + Franceschini case, on a stall of the Piazza San Lorenzo. We read in the + first section of his own work that he plunged instantly into the study of + this record; that he had mastered it by the end of the day; and that he + then stepped out on to the terrace of his house amid the sultry blackness + and silent lightnings of the June night, as the adjacent church of San + Felice sent forth its chants, and voices buzzed in the street below,—and + saw the tragedy as a living picture unfold itself before him. These were + his last days at Casa Guidi. It was four years before he definitely began + the work. The idea of converting the story into a poem cannot even have + occurred to him for some little time, since he offered it for prose + treatment to Miss Ogle, the author of 'A Lost Love'; and for poetic use, I + am almost certain, to one of his leading contemporaries. It was this slow + process of incubation which gave so much force and distinctness to his + ultimate presentment of the characters; though it infused a large measure + of personal imagination, and, as we shall see, of personal reminiscence, + into their historical truth. + </p> + <p> + Before 'The Ring and the Book' was actually begun, 'Dramatis Personae' and + 'In a Balcony' were to be completed. Their production had been delayed + during Mrs. Browning's lifetime, and necessarily interrupted by her death; + but we hear of the work as progressing steadily during this summer of + 1862. + </p> + <p> + A painful subject of correspondence had been also for some time engaging + Mr. Browning's thoughts and pen. A letter to Miss Blagden written January + 19, '63, is so expressive of his continued attitude towards the questions + involved that, in spite of its strong language, his family advise its + publication. The name of the person referred to will alone be omitted. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Ever since I set foot in England I have been pestered with + applications for leave to write the Life of my wife—I have refused—and + there an end. I have last week received two communications from friends, + enclosing the letters of a certain . . . of . . ., asking them for details + of life and letters, for a biography he is engaged in—adding, that + he "has secured the correspondence with her old friend . . ." Think of + this beast working away at this, not deeming my feelings or those of her + family worthy of notice—and meaning to print letters written years + and years ago, on the most intimate and personal subjects to an "old + friend"—which, at the poor . . . [friend's] death fell into the + hands of a complete stranger, who, at once wanted to print them, but + desisted through Ba's earnest expostulation enforced by my own threat to + take law proceedings—as fortunately letters are copyright. I find + this woman died last year, and her son writes to me this morning that . . + . got them from him as autographs merely—he will try and get them + back. . . , evidently a blackguard, got my letter, which gave him his + deserts, on Saturday—no answer yet,—if none comes, I shall be + forced to advertise in the 'Times', and obtain an injunction. But what I + suffer in feeling the hands of these blackguards (for I forgot to say + another man has been making similar applications to friends) what I + undergo with their paws in my very bowels, you can guess, and God knows! + No friend, of course, would ever give up the letters—if anybody ever + is forced to do that which <i>she</i> would have writhed under—if it + ever <i>were</i> necessary, why, <i>I</i> should be forced to do it, and, + with any good to her memory and fame, my own pain in the attempt would be + turned into joy—I should <i>do</i> it at whatever cost: but it is + not only unnecessary but absurdly useless—and, indeed, it shall not + be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along with his breath. + </p> + <p> + 'I am going to reprint the Greek Christian Poets and another essay—nothing + that ought to be published shall be kept back,—and this she + certainly intended to correct, augment, and re-produce—but <i>I</i> + open the doubled-up paper! Warn anyone you may think needs the warning of + the utter distress in which I should be placed were this scoundrel, or any + other of the sort, to baffle me and bring out the letters—I can't + prevent fools from uttering their folly upon her life, as they do on every + other subject, but the law protects property,—as these letters are. + Only last week, or so, the Bishop of Exeter stopped the publication of an + announced "Life"—containing extracts from his correspondence—and + so I shall do. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning only resented the exactions of modern biography in the same + degree as most other right-minded persons; but there was, to his thinking, + something specially ungenerous in dragging to light any immature or + unconsidered utterance which the writer's later judgment would have + disclaimed. Early work was always for him included in this category; and + here it was possible to disagree with him; since the promise of genius has + a legitimate interest from which no distance from its subsequent + fulfilment can detract. But there could be no disagreement as to the + rights and decencies involved in the present case; and, as we hear no more + of the letters to Mr. . . ., we may perhaps assume that their intending + publisher was acting in ignorance, but did not wish to act in defiance, of + Mr. Browning's feeling in the matter. + </p> + <p> + In the course of this year, 1863, Mr. Browning brought out, through + Chapman and Hall, the still well-known and well-loved three-volume edition + of his works, including 'Sordello', but again excluding 'Pauline'. A + selection of his poems which appeared somewhat earlier, if we may judge by + the preface, dated November 1862, deserves mention as a tribute to + friendship. The volume had been prepared by John Forster and Bryan Waller + Procter (Barry Cornwall), 'two friends,' as the preface states, 'who from + the first appearance of 'Paracelsus' have regarded its writer as among the + few great poets of the century.' Mr. Browning had long before signalized + his feeling for Barry Cornwall by the dedication of 'Colombe's Birthday'. + He discharged the present debt to Mr. Procter, if such there was, by the + attentions which he rendered to his infirm old age. For many years he + visited him every Sunday, in spite of a deafness ultimately so complete + that it was only possible to converse with him in writing. These visits + were afterwards, at her urgent request, continued to Mr. Procter's widow. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 15 + </h2> + <h3> + 1863-1869 + </h3> + <p> + Pornic—'James Lee's Wife'—Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's—Letters + to Miss Blagden—His own Estimate of his Work—His Father's + Illness and Death; Miss Browning—Le Croisic—Academic Honours; + Letter to the Master of Balliol—Death of Miss Barrett—Audierne—Uniform + Edition of his Works—His rising Fame—'Dramatis Personae'—'The + Ring and the Book'; Character of Pompilia. + </p> + <p> + The most constant contributions to Mr. Browning's history are supplied + during the next eight or nine years by extracts from his letters to Miss + Blagden. Our next will be dated from Ste.-Marie, near Pornic, where he and + his family again spent their holiday in 1864 and 1865. Some idea of the + life he led there is given at the close of a letter to Frederic Leighton, + August 17, 1863, in which he says: + </p> + <p> + 'I live upon milk and fruit, bathe daily, do a good morning's work, read a + little with Pen and somewhat more by myself, go to bed early, and get up + earlyish—rather liking it all.' + </p> + <p> + This mention of a diet of milk and fruit recalls a favourite habit of Mr. + Browning's: that of almost renouncing animal food whenever he went abroad. + It was partly promoted by the inferior quality of foreign meat, and showed + no sign of specially agreeing with him, at all events in his later years, + when he habitually returned to England looking thinner and more haggard + than before he left it. But the change was always congenial to his taste. + </p> + <p> + A fuller picture of these simple, peaceful, and poetic Pornic days comes + to us through Miss Blagden, August 18: + </p> + <p> + '. . . This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like that + village where we stayed last year. Close to the sea—a hamlet of a + dozen houses, perfectly lonely—one may walk on the edge of the low + rocks by the sea for miles. Our house is the Mayor's, large enough, clean + and bare. If I could, I would stay just as I am for many a day. I feel out + of the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window; with the little + church, a field, a few houses, and the sea. On a weekday there is nobody + in the village, plenty of hay-stacks, cows and fowls; all our butter, + eggs, milk, are produced in the farm-house. Such a soft sea, and such a + mournful wind! + </p> + <p> + 'I wrote a poem yesterday of 120 lines, and mean to keep writing whether I + like it or not. . . .' + </p> + <p> + That 'window' was the 'Doorway' in 'James Lee's Wife'. The sea, the field, + and the fig-tree were visible from it. + </p> + <p> + A long interval in the correspondence, at all events so far as we are + concerned, carries us to the December of 1864, and then Mr. Browning + wrote: + </p> + <p> + '. . . on the other hand, I feel such comfort and delight in doing the + best I can with my own object of life, poetry—which, I think, I + never could have seen the good of before, that it shows me I have taken + the root I <i>did</i> take, <i>well</i>. I hope to do much more yet—and + that the flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow. I really have + great opportunities and advantages—on the whole, almost + unprecedented ones—I think, no other disturbances and cares than + those I am most grateful for being allowed to have. . . .' + </p> + <p> + One of our very few written reminiscences of Mr. Browning's social life + refers to this year, 1864, and to the evening, February 12, on which he + signed his will in the presence of Mr. Francis Palgrave and Alfred + Tennyson. It is inscribed in the diary of Mr. Thomas Richmond, then + chaplain to St. George's Hospital; and Mr. Reginald Palgrave has kindly + procured me a copy of it. A brilliant party had met at dinner at the house + of Mr. F. Palgrave, York Gate, Regent's Park; Mr. Richmond, having + fulfilled a prior engagement, had joined it later. 'There were, in order,' + he says, 'round the dinner-table (dinner being over), Gifford Palgrave, + Tennyson, Dr. John Ogle, Sir Francis H. Doyle, Frank Palgrave, W. E. + Gladstone, Browning, Sir John Simeon, Monsignor Patterson, Woolner, and + Reginald Palgrave.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Richmond closes his entry by saying he will never forget that evening. + The names of those whom it had brought together, almost all to be sooner + or later numbered among the Poet's friends, were indeed enough to stamp it + as worthy of recollection. One or two characteristic utterances of Mr. + Browning are, however, the only ones which it seems advisable to repeat + here. The conversation having turned on the celebration of the Shakespeare + ter-centenary, he said: 'Here we are called upon to acknowledge + Shakespeare, we who have him in our very bones and blood, our very selves. + The very recognition of Shakespeare's merits by the Committee reminds me + of nothing so apt as an illustration, as the decree of the Directoire that + men might acknowledge God.' + </p> + <p> + Among the subjects discussed was the advisability of making schoolboys + write English verses as well as Latin and Greek. 'Woolner and Sir Francis + Doyle were for this; Gladstone and Browning against it.' + </p> + <p> + Work had now found its fitting place in the Poet's life. It was no longer + the overflow of an irresistible productive energy; it was the deliberate + direction of that energy towards an appointed end. We hear something of + his own feeling concerning this in a letter of August '65, again from + Ste.-Marie, and called forth by some gossip concerning him which Miss + Blagden had connected with his then growing fame. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I suppose that what you call "my fame within these four years" + comes from a little of this gossiping and going about, and showing myself + to be alive: and so indeed some folks say—but I hardly think it: for + remember I was uninterruptedly (almost) in London from the time I + published 'Paracelsus' till I ended that string of plays with 'Luria'—and + I used to go out then, and see far more of merely literary people, critics + &c. than I do now,—but what came of it? There were always a few + people who had a certain opinion of my poems, but nobody cared to speak + what he thought, or the things printed twenty-five years ago would not + have waited so long for a good word; but at last a new set of men arrive + who don't mind the conventionalities of ignoring one and seeing everything + in another—Chapman says, "the new orders come from Oxford and + Cambridge," and all my new cultivators are young men—more than that, + I observe that some of my old friends don't like at all the irruption of + outsiders who rescue me from their sober and private approval, and take + those words out of their mouths "which they always meant to say" and never + did. When there gets to be a general feeling of this kind, that there must + be something in the works of an author, the reviews are obliged to notice + him, such notice as it is—but what poor work, even when doing its + best! I mean poor in the failure to give a general notion of the whole + works; not a particular one of such and such points therein. As I begun, + so I shall end,—taking my own course, pleasing myself or aiming at + doing so, and thereby, I hope, pleasing God. + </p> + <p> + 'As I never did otherwise, I never had any fear as to what I did going + ultimately to the bad,—hence in collected editions I always + reprinted everything, smallest and greatest. Do you ever see, by the way, + the numbers of the selection which Moxons publish? They are exclusively + poems omitted in that other selection by Forster; it seems little use + sending them to you, but when they are completed, if they give me a few + copies, you shall have one if you like. Just before I left London, + Macmillan was anxious to print a third selection, for his Golden Treasury, + which should of course be different from either—but <i>three</i> + seem too absurd. There—enough of me— + </p> + <p> + 'I certainly will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self before I + die; for one reason, that I may help old Pen the better; I was much struck + by the kind ways, and interest shown in me by the Oxford undergraduates,—those + introduced to me by Jowett.—I am sure they would be the more helpful + to my son. So, good luck to my great venture, the murder-poem, which I do + hope will strike you and all good lovers of mine. . . .' + </p> + <p> + We cannot wonder at the touch of bitterness with which Mr. Browning dwells + on the long neglect which he had sustained; but it is at first sight + difficult to reconcile this high positive estimate of the value of his + poetry with the relative depreciation of his own poetic genius which + constantly marks his attitude towards that of his wife. The facts are, + however, quite compatible. He regarded Mrs. Browning's genius as greater, + because more spontaneous, than his own: owing less to life and its + opportunities; but he judged his own work as the more important, because + of the larger knowledge of life which had entered into its production. He + was wrong in the first terms of his comparison: for he underrated the + creative, hence spontaneous element in his own nature, while claiming + primarily the position of an observant thinker; and he overrated the + amount of creativeness implied by the poetry of his wife. He failed to see + that, given her intellectual endowments, and the lyric gift, the + characteristics of her genius were due to circumstances as much as those + of his own. Actual life is not the only source of poetic inspiration, + though it may perhaps be the best. Mrs. Browning as a poet became what she + was, not in spite of her long seclusion, but by help of it. A touching + paragraph, bearing upon this subject, is dated October '65. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Another thing. I have just been making a selection of Ba's poems + which is wanted—how I have done it, I can hardly say—it is one + dear delight to know that the work of her goes on more effectually than + ever—her books are more and more read—certainly, sold. A new + edition of Aurora Leigh is completely exhausted within this year. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Of the thing next dearest to his memory, his Florentine home, he had + written in the January of this year: + </p> + <p> + '. . . Yes, Florence will never be <i>my</i> Florence again. To build over + or beside Poggio seems barbarous and inexcusable. The Fiesole side don't + matter. Are they going to pull the old walls down, or any part of them, I + want to know? Why can't they keep the old city as a nucleus and build + round and round it, as many rings of houses as they please,—framing + the picture as deeply as they please? Is Casa Guidi to be turned into any + Public Office? I should think that its natural destination. If I am at + liberty to flee away one day, it will not be to Florence, I dare say. As + old Philipson said to me once of Jerusalem—"No, I don't want to go + there,—I can see it in my head." . . . Well, goodbye, dearest Isa. I + have been for a few minutes—nay, a good many,—so really with + you in Florence that it would be no wonder if you heard my steps up the + lane to your house. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Part of a letter written in the September of '65 from Ste.-Marie may be + interesting as referring to the legend of Pornic included in 'Dramatis + Personae'. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I suppose my "poem" which you say brings me and Pornic together in + your mind, is the one about the poor girl—if so, "fancy" (as I hear + you say) they have pulled down the church since I arrived last month—there + are only the shell-like, roofless walls left, for a few weeks more; it was + very old—built on a natural base of rock—small enough, to be + sure—so they build a smart new one behind it, and down goes this; + just as if they could not have pitched down their brick and stucco farther + away, and left the old place for the fishermen—so here—the + church is even more picturesque—and certain old Norman ornaments, + capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in the doorway, are + at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the road-side. The people here are + good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense of picturesqueness in + their clodpolls. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The little record continues through 1866. + </p> + <p> + Feb. 19, '66. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a dinner + last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, is staying in + town for a few weeks,—and she is just what she was and always will + be—very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I met him + at a large party on Saturday—also Carlyle, whom I never met at a + "drum" before. . . . Pen is drawing our owl—a bird that is the light + of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways. . . .' + </p> + <p> + May 19, '66. + </p> + <p> + '. . . My father has been unwell,—he is better and will go into the + country the moment the east winds allow,—for in Paris,—as + here,—there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of sunshine. I hope + to hear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: he + is eighty-five, almost,—you see! otherwise his wonderful + constitution would keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is + absolutely as I always remember it,—and the other day when I wanted + some information about a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular + bookful of notes and extracts thereabout. . . .' + </p> + <p> + June 20, '66. + </p> + <p> + 'My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, and arrived + time enough to pass twenty-four hours more with my father: he died on the + 14th—quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, which would have + overcome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties to the last—was + utterly indifferent to death,—asking with surprise what it was we + were affected about since he was perfectly happy?—and kept his own + strange sweetness of soul to the end—nearly his last words to me, as + I was fanning him, were "I am so afraid that I fatigue you, dear!" this, + while his sufferings were great; for the strength of his constitution + seemed impossible to be subdued. He wanted three weeks exactly to complete + his eighty-fifth year. So passed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, + religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would so easily have made + him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the love of + money or social influence meant. As it is, he was known by half-a-dozen + friends. He was worthy of being Ba's father—out of the whole world, + only he, so far as my experience goes. She loved him,—and <i>he</i> + said, very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only that picture + had put into his head that there might be such a thing as the worship of + the images of saints. My sister will come and live with me henceforth. You + see what she loses. All her life has been spent in caring for my mother, + and seventeen years after that, my father. You may be sure she does not + rave and rend hair like people who have plenty to atone for in the past; + but she loses very much. I returned to London last night. . . .' + </p> + <p> + During his hurried journey to Paris, Mr. Browning was mentally blessing + the Emperor for having abolished the system of passports, and thus enabled + him to reach his father's bedside in time. His early Italian journeys had + brought him some vexatious experience of the old order of things. Once, at + Venice, he had been mistaken for a well-known Liberal, Dr. Bowring, and + found it almost impossible to get his passport 'vise'; and, on another + occasion, it aroused suspicion by being 'too good'; though in what sense I + do not quite remember. + </p> + <p> + Miss Browning did come to live with her brother, and was thenceforward his + inseparable companion. Her presence with him must therefore be understood + wherever I have had no special reason for mentioning it. + </p> + <p> + They tried Dinard for the remainder of the summer; but finding it + unsuitable, proceeded by St.-Malo to Le Croisic, the little sea-side town + of south-eastern Brittany which two of Mr. Browning's poems have since + rendered famous. + </p> + <p> + The following extract has no date. + </p> + <p> + Le Croisic, Loire Inferieure. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We all found Dinard unsuitable, and after staying a few days at St. + Malo resolved to try this place, and well for us, since it serves our + purpose capitally. . . . We are in the most delicious and peculiar old + house I ever occupied, the oldest in the town—plenty of great rooms—nearly + as much space as in Villa Alberti. The little town, and surrounding + country are wild and primitive, even a trifle beyond Pornic perhaps. Close + by is Batz, a village where the men dress in white from head to foot, with + baggy breeches, and great black flap hats;—opposite is Guerande, the + old capital of Bretagne: you have read about it in Balzac's 'Beatrix',—and + other interesting places are near. The sea is all round our peninsula, and + on the whole I expect we shall like it very much. . . .' + </p> + <p> + Later. + </p> + <p> + '. . . We enjoyed Croisic increasingly to the last—spite of three + weeks' vile weather, in striking contrast to the golden months at Pornic + last year. I often went to Guerande—once Sarianna and I walked from + it in two hours and something under,—nine miles:—though from + our house, straight over the sands and sea, it is not half the distance. . + . .' + </p> + <p> + In 1867 Mr. Browning received his first and greatest academic honours. The + M.A. degree by diploma, of the University of Oxford, was conferred on him + in June;* and in the month of October he was made honorary Fellow of + Balliol College. Dr. Jowett allows me to publish the, as he terms it, very + characteristic letter in which he acknowledged the distinction. Dr. Scott, + afterwards Dean of Rochester, was then Master of Balliol. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * 'Not a lower degree than that of D.C.L., but a much higher + honour, hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time except to + kings and royal personages. . . .' So the Keeper of the + Archives wrote to Mr. Browning at the time. +</pre> + <p> + 19, Warwick Crescent: Oct. 21, '67. + </p> + <p> + Dear Dr. Scott,—I am altogether unable to say how I feel as to the + fact you communicate to me. I must know more intimately than you can how + little worthy I am of such an honour,—you hardly can set the value + of that honour, you who give, as I who take it. + </p> + <p> + Indeed, there <i>are</i> both 'duties and emoluments' attached to this + position,—duties of deep and lasting gratitude, and emoluments + through which I shall be wealthy my life long. I have at least loved + learning and the learned, and there needed no recognition of my love on + their part to warrant my professing myself, as I do, dear Dr. Scott, yours + ever most faithfully, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + In the following year he received and declined the virtual offer of the + Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews, rendered vacant by the + death of Mr. J. S. Mill. + </p> + <p> + He returned with his sister to Le Croisic for the summer of 1867. + </p> + <p> + In June 1868, Miss Arabel Barrett died, of a rheumatic affection of the + heart. As did her sister seven years before, she passed away in Mr. + Browning's arms. He wrote the event to Miss Blagden as soon as it + occurred, describing also a curious circumstance attendant on it. + </p> + <p> + 19th June, '68. + </p> + <p> + '. . . You know I am not superstitious—here is a note I made in a + book, Tuesday, July 21, 1863. "Arabel told me yesterday that she had been + much agitated by a dream which happened the night before, Sunday, July 19. + She saw Her and asked 'when shall I be with you?' the reply was, 'Dearest, + in five years,' whereupon Arabella woke. She knew in her dream that it was + not to the living she spoke."—In five years, within a month of their + completion—I had forgotten the date of the dream, and supposed it + was only three years ago, and that two had still to run. Only a + coincidence, but noticeable. . . .' + </p> + <p> + In August he writes again from Audierne, Finisterre (Brittany). + </p> + <p> + '. . . You never heard of this place, I daresay. After staying a few days + at Paris we started for Rennes,—reached Caen and halted a little—thence + made for Auray, where we made excursions to Carnac, Lokmariaker, and + Ste.-Anne d'Auray; all very interesting of their kind; then saw Brest, + Morlaix, St.-Pol de Leon, and the sea-port Roscoff,—our intended + bathing place—it was full of folk, however, and otherwise + impracticable, so we had nothing for it, but to "rebrousser chemin" and + get to the south-west again. At Quimper we heard (for a second time) that + Audierne would suit us exactly, and to it we came—happily, for + "suit" it certainly does. Look on the map for the most westerly point of + Bretagne—and of the mainland of Europe—there is niched + Audierne, a delightful quite unspoiled little fishing-town, with the open + ocean in front, and beautiful woods, hills and dales, meadows and lanes + behind and around,—sprinkled here and there with villages each with + its fine old Church. Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours' + walk in the course of which we visited a town, Pont Croix, with a + beautiful cathedral-like building amid the cluster of clean bright Breton + houses,—and a little farther is another church, "Notre Dame de + Comfort", with only a hovel or two round it, worth the journey from + England to see; we are therefore very well off—at an inn, I should + say, with singularly good, kind, and liberal people, so have no cares for + the moment. May you be doing as well! The weather has been most + propitious, and to-day is perfect to a wish. We bathe, but somewhat + ingloriously, in a smooth creek of mill-pond quietude, (there being no + cabins on the bay itself,) unlike the great rushing waves of Croisic—the + water is much colder. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The tribute contained in this letter to the merits of le Pere Batifoulier + and his wife would not, I think, be endorsed by the few other English + travellers who have stayed at their inn. The writer's own genial and + kindly spirit no doubt partly elicited, and still more supplied, the + qualities he saw in them. + </p> + <p> + The six-volume, so long known as 'uniform' edition of Mr. Browning's + works, was brought out in the autumn of this year by Messrs. Smith, Elder + & Co.; practically Mr. George Murray Smith, who was to be + thenceforward his exclusive publisher and increasingly valued friend. In + the winter months appeared the first two volumes (to be followed in the + ensuing spring by the third and fourth) of 'The Ring and the Book'. + </p> + <p> + With 'The Ring and the Book' Mr. Browning attained the full recognition of + his genius. The 'Athenaeum' spoke of it as the 'opus magnum' of the + generation; not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poetic + achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritual + treasure that England had produced since the days of Shakespeare. His + popularity was yet to come, so also the widespread reading of his hitherto + neglected poems; but henceforth whatever he published was sure of ready + acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation. The ground + had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in another letter to Miss + Blagden shows that, when 'The Ring and the Book' appeared, a high place + was already awaiting it outside those higher academic circles in which its + author's position was secured. + </p> + <p> + '. . . I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me pretty + offers for it. One sent to propose, last week, to publish it at his risk, + giving me <i>all</i> the profits, and pay me the whole in advance—"for + the incidental advantages of my name"—the R. B. who for six months + once did not sell one copy of the poems! I ask 200 Pounds for the sheets + to America, and shall get it. . . .' + </p> + <p> + His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interest in + his productions; and we may fairly credit 'Dramatis Personae' with having + finally awakened his countrymen of all classes to the fact that a great + creative power had arisen among them. 'The Ring and the Book' and + 'Dramatis Personae' cannot indeed be dissociated in what was the + culminating moment in the author's poetic life, even more than the zenith + of his literary career. In their expression of all that constituted the + wide range and the characteristic quality of his genius, they at once + support and supplement each other. But a fact of more distinctive + biographical interest connects itself exclusively with the later work. + </p> + <p> + We cannot read the emotional passages of 'The Ring and the Book' without + hearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning's own: an echo, not of + his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past must have accompanied + him through every stage of the great work. Its subject had come to him in + the last days of his greatest happiness. It had lived with him, though in + the background of consciousness, through those of his keenest sorrow. It + was his refuge in that aftertime, in which a subsiding grief often leaves + a deeper sense of isolation. He knew the joy with which his wife would + have witnessed the diligent performance of this his self-imposed task. The + beautiful dedication contained in the first and last books was only a + matter of course. But Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence on this occasion + was more than a presiding memory of the heart. I am convinced that it + entered largely into the conception of 'Pompilia', and, so far as this + depended on it, the character of the whole work. In the outward course of + her history, Mr. Browning proceeded strictly on the ground of fact. His + dramatic conscience would not have allowed it otherwise. He had read the + record of the case, as he has been heard to say, fully eight times over + before converting it into the substance of his poem; and the form in which + he finally cast it, was that which recommended itself to him as true—which, + within certain limits, <i>was</i> true. The testimony of those who watched + by Pompilia's death-bed is almost conclusive as to the absence of any + criminal motive to her flight, or criminal circumstance connected with it. + Its time proved itself to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly + expected motherhood, and may have had some reference to this fact. But the + real Pompilia was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her + husband, and had made repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my + memory much deceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the + historical defence of her flight. If it appeared there at all, it was as a + merely practical incentive to her striving to place herself in safety. The + sudden rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the + case, becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and her + culture; it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is more striking, it + was not a natural development of Mr. Browning's imagination concerning + them. + </p> + <p> + The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature—a fact + which renders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son; it finds + little or no expression in his work. The apotheosis of motherhood which he + puts forth through the aged priest in 'Ivan Ivanovitch' was due to the + poetic necessity of lifting a ghastly human punishment into the sphere of + Divine retribution. Even in the advancing years which soften the father + into the grandfather, the essential quality of early childhood was not + that which appealed to him. He would admire its flower-like beauty, but + not linger over it. He had no special emotion for its helplessness. When + he was attracted by a child it was through the evidence of something not + only distinct from, but opposed to this. 'It is the soul' (I see) 'in that + speck of a body,' he said, not many years ago, of a tiny boy—now too + big for it to be desirable that I should mention his name, but whose + mother, if she reads this, will know to whom I allude—who had + delighted him by an act of intelligent grace which seemed beyond his + years. The ingenuously unbounded maternal pride, the almost luscious + maternal sentiment, of Pompilia's dying moments can only associate + themselves in our mind with Mrs. Browning's personal utterances, and some + notable passages in 'Casa Guidi Windows' and 'Aurora Leigh'. Even the + exalted fervour of the invocation to Caponsacchi, its blending of + spiritual ecstasy with half-realized earthly emotion, has, I think, no + parallel in her husband's work. + </p> + <p> + 'Pompilia' bears, still, unmistakably, the stamp of her author's genius. + Only he could have imagined her peculiar form of consciousness; her + childlike, wondering, yet subtle, perception of the anomalies of life. He + has raised the woman in her from the typical to the individual by this + distinguishing touch of his supreme originality; and thus infused into her + character a haunting pathos which renders it to many readers the most + exquisite in the whole range of his creations. For others at the same + time, it fails in the impressiveness because it lacks the reality which + habitually marks them. + </p> + <p> + So much, however, is certain: Mr. Browning would never have accepted this + 'murder story' as the subject of a poem, if he could not in some sense + have made it poetical. It was only in an idealized Pompilia that the + material for such a process could be found. We owe it, therefore, to the + one departure from his usual mode of dramatic conception, that the Poet's + masterpiece has been produced. I know no other instance of what can be + even mistaken for reflected inspiration in the whole range of his work, + the given passages in 'Pauline' excepted. + </p> + <p> + The postscript of a letter to Frederic Leighton written so far back as + October 17, 1864, is interesting in its connection with the preliminary + stages of this great undertaking. + </p> + <p> + 'A favour, if you have time for it. Go into the church St. Lorenzo in + Lucina in the Corso—and look attentively at it—so as to + describe it to me on your return. The general arrangement of the building, + if with a nave—pillars or not—the number of altars, and any + particularity there may be—over the High Altar is a famous + Crucifixion by Guido. It will be of great use to me. I don't care about + the <i>outsid</i>.' + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 16 + </h2> + <h3> + 1869-1873 + </h3> + <p> + Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower—Scotland; Visit to Lady Ashburton—Letters + to Miss Blagden—St.-Aubin; The Franco-Prussian War—'Herve + Riel'—Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith—'Balaustion's Adventure'; + 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'—'Fifine at the Fair'—Mistaken + Theories of Mr. Browning's Work—St.-Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap + Country'. + </p> + <p> + From 1869 to 1871 Mr. Browning published nothing; but in April 1870 he + wrote the sonnet called 'Helen's Tower', a beautiful tribute to the memory + of Helen, mother of Lord Dufferin, suggested by the memorial tower which + her son was erecting to her on his estate at Clandeboye. The sonnet + appeared in 1883, in the 'Pall Mall Gazette', and was reprinted in 1886, + in 'Sonnets of the Century', edited by Mr. Sharp; and again in the fifth + part of the Browning Society's 'Papers'; but it is still I think + sufficiently little known to justify its reproduction. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Who hears of Helen's Tower may dream perchance + How the Greek Beauty from the Scaean Gate + Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, + Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. + + Hearts would leap otherwise at thy advance, + Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate! + Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, + Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance. + + The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange; + A transitory shame of long ago; + It dies into the sand from which it sprang; + But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change. + God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, + When all the morning-stars together sang. +</pre> + <p> + April 26, 1870. + </p> + <p> + Lord Dufferin is a warm admirer of Mr. Browning's genius. He also held him + in strong personal regard. + </p> + <p> + In the summer of 1869 the poet, with his sister and son, changed the + manner of his holiday, by joining Mr. Story and his family in a tour in + Scotland, and a visit to Louisa, Lady Ashburton, at Loch Luichart Lodge; + but in the August of 1870 he was again in the primitive atmosphere of a + French fishing village, though one which had little to recommend it but + the society of a friend; it was M. Milsand's St.-Aubin. He had written, + February 24, to Miss Blagden, under the one inspiration which naturally + recurred in his correspondence with her. + </p> + <p> + '. . . So you, too, think of Naples for an eventual resting-place! Yes, + that is the proper basking-ground for "bright and aged snakes." Florence + would be irritating, and, on the whole, insufferable—Yet I never + hear of any one going thither but my heart is twitched. There is a good, + charming, little singing German lady, Miss Regan, who told me the other + day that she was just about revisiting her aunt, Madame Sabatier, whom you + may know, or know of—and I felt as if I should immensely like to + glide, for a long summer-day through the streets and between the old + stone-walls,—unseen come and unheard go—perhaps by some + miracle, I shall do so—and look up at Villa Brichieri as Arnold's + Gypsy-Scholar gave one wistful look at "the line of festal light in Christ + Church Hall," before he went to sleep in some forgotten grange. . . . I am + so glad I can be comfortable in your comfort. I fancy exactly how you feel + and see how you live: it <i>is</i> the Villa Geddes of old days, I find. I + well remember the fine view from the upper room—that looking down + the steep hill, by the side of which runs the road you describe—that + path was always my preferred walk, for its shortness (abruptness) and the + fine old wall to your left (from the Villa) which is overgrown with weeds + and wild flowers—violets and ground-ivy, I remember. Oh, me! to find + myself some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned to + Florence—"ten minutes to the gate, ten minutes <i>home</i>!" I think + I should fairly end it all on the spot. . . .' + </p> + <p> + He writes again from St.-Aubin, August 19, 1870: + </p> + <p> + 'Dearest Isa,—Your letter came prosperously to this little wild + place, where we have been, Sarianna and myself, just a week. Milsand lives + in a cottage with a nice bit of garden, two steps off, and we occupy + another of the most primitive kind on the sea-shore—which shore is a + good sandy stretch for miles and miles on either side. I don't think we + were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air from all quarters as + here—the weather is fine, and we do well enough. The sadness of the + war and its consequences go far to paralyse all our pleasure, however. . . + . + </p> + <p> + 'Well, you are at Siena—one of the places I love best to remember. + You are returned—or I would ask you to tell me how the Villa Alberti + wears, and if the fig-tree behind the house is green and strong yet. I + have a pen-and-ink drawing of it, dated and signed the last day Ba was + ever there—"my fig tree—" she used to sit under it, reading + and writing. Nine years, or ten rather, since then! Poor old Landor's oak, + too, and his cottage, ought not to be forgotten. Exactly opposite this + house,—just over the way of the water,—shines every night the + light-house of Havre—a place I know well, and love very moderately: + but it always gives me a thrill as I see afar, <i>exactly</i> a particular + spot which I was at along with her. At this moment, I see the white streak + of the phare in the sun, from the window where I write and I <i>think</i>. + . . . Milsand went to Paris last week, just before we arrived, to + transport his valuables to a safer place than his house, which is near the + fortifications. He is filled with as much despondency as can be—while + the old dear and perfect kindness remains. I never knew or shall know his + like among men. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The war did more than sadden Mr. and Miss Browning's visit to St.-Aubin; + it opposed unlooked-for difficulties to their return home. They had + remained, unconscious of the impending danger, till Sedan had been taken, + the Emperor's downfall proclaimed, and the country suddenly placed in a + state of siege. One morning M. Milsand came to them in anxious haste, and + insisted on their starting that very day. An order, he said, had been + issued that no native should leave the country, and it only needed some + unusually thick-headed Maire for Mr. Browning to be arrested as a runaway + Frenchman or a Prussian spy. The usual passenger boats from Calais and + Boulogne no longer ran; but there was, he believed, a chance of their + finding one at Havre. They acted on this warning, and discovered its + wisdom in the various hindrances which they found on their way. Everywhere + the horses had been requisitioned for the war. The boat on which they had + relied to take them down the river to Caen had been stopped that very + morning; and when they reached the railroad they were told that the + Prussians would be at the other end before night. At last they arrived at + Honfleur, where they found an English vessel which was about to convey + cattle to Southampton; and in this, setting out at midnight, they made + their passage to England. + </p> + <p> + Some words addressed to Miss Blagden, written I believe in 1871, once more + strike a touching familiar note. + </p> + <p> + '. . . But <i>no</i>, dearest Isa. The simple truth is that <i>she</i> was + the poet, and I the clever person by comparison—remember her limited + experience of all kinds, and what she made of it. Remember on the other + hand, how my uninterrupted health and strength and practice with the world + have helped me. . . .' + </p> + <p> + 'Balaustion's Adventure' and 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' were published, + respectively, in August and December 1871. They had been preceded in the + March of the same year by a ballad, 'Herve Riel', afterwards reprinted in + the 'Pacchiarotto' volume, and which Mr. Browning now sold to the + 'Cornhill Magazine' for the benefit of the French sufferers by the war. + </p> + <p> + The circumstances of this little transaction, unique in Mr. Browning's + experience, are set forth in the following letter: + </p> + <p> + Feb. 4, '71. + </p> + <p> + 'My dear Smith,—I want to give something to the people in Paris, and + can afford so very little just now, that I am forced upon an expedient. + Will you buy of me that poem which poor Simeon praised in a letter you + saw, and which I like better than most things I have done of late?—Buy,—I + mean,—the right of printing it in the Pall Mall and, if you please, + the Cornhill also,—the copyright remaining with me. You remember you + wanted to print it in the Cornhill, and I was obstinate: there is hardly + any occasion on which I should be otherwise, if the printing any poem of + mine in a magazine were purely for my own sake: so, any liberality you + exercise will not be drawn into a precedent against you. I fancy this is a + case in which one may handsomely puff one's own ware, and I venture to + call my verses good for once. I send them to you directly, because + expedition will render whatever I contribute more valuable: for when you + make up your mind as to how liberally I shall be enabled to give, you must + send me a cheque and I will send the same as the "Product of a Poem"—so + that your light will shine deservedly. Now, begin proceedings by reading + the poem to Mrs. Smith,—by whose judgment I will cheerfully be + bound; and, with her approval, second my endeavour as best you can. Would,—for + the love of France,—that this were a "Song of a Wren"—then + should the guineas equal the lines; as it is, do what you safely may for + the song of a Robin—Browning—who is yours very truly, into the + bargain. + </p> + <p> + 'P.S. The copy is so clear and careful that you might, with a good Reader, + print it on Monday, nor need my help for corrections: I shall however be + always at home, and ready at a moment's notice: return the copy, if you + please, as I promised it to my son long ago.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Smith gave him 100 guineas as the price of the poem. + </p> + <p> + He wrote concerning the two longer poems, first probably at the close of + this year, and again in January 1872, to Miss Blagden. + </p> + <p> + '. . . By this time you have got my little book ('Hohenstiel') and seen + for yourself whether I make the best or worst of the case. I think, in the + main, he meant to do what I say, and, but for weakness,—grown more + apparent in his last years than formerly,—would have done what I say + he did not.* I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, <i>et + pour cause</i>: better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made, + and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in the + last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers' best. I am told + my little thing is succeeding—sold 1,400 in the first five days, and + before any notice appeared. I remember that the year I made the little + rough sketch in Rome, '60, my account for the last six months with Chapman + was—<i>nil</i>, not one copy disposed of! . . . + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * This phrase is a little misleading. +</pre> + <p> + '. . . I am glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh calls my + eulogium on the second empire,—which it is not, any more than what + another wiseacre affirms it to be "a scandalous attack on the old constant + friend of England"—it is just what I imagine the man might, if he + pleased, say for himself.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning continues: + </p> + <p> + 'Spite of my ailments and bewailments I have just all but finished another + poem of quite another kind, which shall amuse you in the spring, I hope! I + don't go sound asleep at all events. 'Balaustion'—the second edition + is in the press I think I told you. 2,500 in five months, is a good sale + for the likes of me. But I met Henry Taylor (of Artevelde) two days ago at + dinner, and he said he had never gained anything by his books, which + surely is a shame—I mean, if no buyers mean no readers. . . .' + </p> + <p> + 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' was written in Scotland, where Mr. Browning + was the guest of Mr. Ernest Benzon: having left his sister to the care of + M. and Madame Milsand at St.-Aubin. The ailment he speaks of consisted, I + believe, of a severe cold. Another of the occurrences of 1871 was Mr. + Browning's election as Life Governor of the London University. + </p> + <p> + A passage from a letter dated March 30, '72, bears striking testimony to + the constant warmth of his affections. + </p> + <p> + '. . . The misfortune, which I did not guess when I accepted the + invitation, is that I shall lose some of the last days of Milsand, who has + been here for the last month: no words can express the love I have for + him, you know. He is increasingly precious to me. . . . Waring came back + the other day, after thirty years' absence, the same as ever,—nearly. + He has been Prime Minister at New Zealand for a year and a half, but gets + tired, and returns home with a poem.'* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * 'Ranolf and Amohia'. +</pre> + <p> + This is my last extract from the correspondence with Miss Blagden. Her + death closed it altogether within the year. + </p> + <p> + It is difficult to infer from letters, however intimate, the dominant + state of the writer's mind: most of all to do so in Mr. Browning's case, + from such passages of his correspondence as circumstances allow me to + quote. Letters written in intimacy, and to the same friend, often express + a recurrent mood, a revived set of associations, which for the moment + destroys the habitual balance of feeling. The same effect is sometimes + produced in personal intercourse; and the more varied the life, the more + versatile the nature, the more readily in either case will a lately unused + spring of emotion well up at the passing touch. We may even fancy we read + into the letters of 1870 that eerie, haunting sadness of a cherished + memory from which, in spite of ourselves, life is bearing us away. We may + also err in so doing. But literary creation, patiently carried on through + a given period, is usually a fair reflection of the general moral and + mental conditions under which it has taken place; and it would be hard to + imagine from Mr. Browning's work during these last ten years that any but + gracious influences had been operating upon his genius, any more + disturbing element than the sense of privation and loss had entered into + his inner life. + </p> + <p> + Some leaven of bitterness must, nevertheless, have been working within + him, or he could never have produced that piece of perplexing cynicism, + 'Fifine at the Fair'—the poem referred to as in progress in a letter + to Miss Blagden, and which appeared in the spring of 1872. The disturbing + cause had been also of long standing; for the deeper reactive processes of + Mr. Browning's nature were as slow as its more superficial response was + swift; and while 'Dramatis Personae', 'The Ring and the Book', and even + 'Balaustion's Adventure', represented the gradually perfected substance of + his poetic imagination, 'Fifine at the Fair' was as the froth thrown up by + it during the prolonged simmering which was to leave it clear. The work + displays the iridescent brightness as well as the occasional impurity of + this froth-like character. Beauty and ugliness are, indeed, almost + inseparable in the moral impression which it leaves upon us. The author + has put forth a plea for self-indulgence with a much slighter attempt at + dramatic disguise than his special pleadings generally assume; and while + allowing circumstances to expose the sophistry of the position, and punish + its attendant act, he does not sufficiently condemn it. But, in + identifying himself for the moment with the conception of a Don Juan, he + has infused into it a tenderness and a poetry with which the true type had + very little in common, and which retard its dramatic development. Those + who knew Mr. Browning, or who thoroughly know his work, may censure, + regret, fail to understand 'Fifine at the Fair'; they will never in any + important sense misconstrue it. + </p> + <p> + But it has been so misconstrued by an intelligent and not unsympathetic + critic; and his construction may be endorsed by other persons in the + present, and still more in the future, in whom the elements of a truer + judgment are wanting. It seems, therefore, best to protest at once against + the misjudgment, though in so doing I am claiming for it an attention + which it may not seem to deserve. I allude to Mr. Mortimer's 'Note on + Browning' in the 'Scottish Art Review' for December 1889. This note + contains a summary of Mr. Browning's teaching, which it resolves into the + moral equivalent of the doctrine of the conservation of force. Mr. + Mortimer assumes for the purpose of his comparison that the exercise of + force means necessarily moving on; and according to him Mr. Browning + prescribes action at any price, even that of defying the restrictions of + moral law. He thus, we are told, blames the lovers in 'The Statue and the + Bust' for their failure to carry out what was an immoral intention; and, + in the person of his 'Don Juan', defends a husband's claim to relieve the + fixity of conjugal affection by varied adventure in the world of temporary + loves: the result being 'the negation of that convention under which we + habitually view life, but which for some reason or other breaks down when + we have to face the problems of a Goethe, a Shelley, a Byron, or a + Browning.' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Mortimer's generalization does not apply to 'The Statue and the Bust', + since Mr. Browning has made it perfectly clear that, in this case, the + intended act is postponed without reference to its morality, and simply in + consequence of a weakness of will, which would have been as paralyzing to + a good purpose as it was to the bad one; but it is not without superficial + sanction in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and the part which the author allowed + himself to play in it did him an injustice only to be measured by the + inference which it has been made to support. There could be no mistake + more ludicrous, were it less regrettable, than that of classing Mr. + Browning, on moral grounds, with Byron or Shelley; even in the case of + Goethe the analogy breaks down. The evidence of the foregoing pages has + rendered all protest superfluous. But the suggested moral resemblance to + the two English poets receives a striking comment in a fact of Mr. + Browning's life which falls practically into the present period of our + history: his withdrawal from Shelley of the devotion of more than forty + years on account of an act of heartlessness towards his first wife which + he held to have been proved against him. + </p> + <p> + The sweet and the bitter lay, indeed, very close to each other at the + sources of Mr. Browning's inspiration. Both proceeded, in great measure, + from his spiritual allegiance to the past—that past by which it was + impossible that he should linger, but which he could not yet leave behind. + The present came to him with friendly greeting. He was unconsciously, + perhaps inevitably, unjust to what it brought. The injustice reacted upon + himself, and developed by degrees into the cynical mood of fancy which + became manifest in 'Fifine at the Fair'. + </p> + <p> + It is true that, in the light of this explanation, we see an effect very + unlike its cause; but the chemistry of human emotion is like that of + natural life. It will often form a compound in which neither of its + constituents can be recognized. This perverse poem was the last as well as + the first manifestation of an ungenial mood of Mr. Browning's mind. A + slight exception may be made for some passages in 'Red Cotton Nightcap + Country', and for one of the poems of the 'Pacchiarotto' volume; but + otherwise no sign of moral or mental disturbance betrays itself in his + subsequent work. The past and the present gradually assumed for him a more + just relation to each other. He learned to meet life as it offered itself + to him with a more frank recognition of its good gifts, a more grateful + response to them. He grew happier, hence more genial, as the years + advanced. + </p> + <p> + It was not without misgiving that Mr. Browning published 'Fifine at the + Fair'; but many years were to pass before he realized the kind of + criticism to which it had exposed him. The belief conveyed in the letter + to Miss Blagden that what proceeds from a genuine inspiration is justified + by it, combined with the indifference to public opinion which had been + engendered in him by its long neglect, made him slow to anticipate the + results of external judgment, even where he was in some degree prepared to + endorse them. For his value as a poet, it was best so. + </p> + <p> + The August of 1872 and of 1873 again found him with his sister at + St.-Aubin, and the earlier visit was an important one: since it supplied + him with the materials of his next work, of which Miss Annie Thackeray, + there also for a few days, suggested the title. The tragic drama which + forms the subject of Mr. Browning's poem had been in great part enacted in + the vicinity of St.-Aubin; and the case of disputed inheritance to which + it had given rise was pending at that moment in the tribunals of Caen. The + prevailing impression left on Miss Thackeray's mind by this primitive + district was, she declared, that of white cotton nightcaps (the habitual + headgear of the Normandy peasants). She engaged to write a story called + 'White Cotton Nightcap Country'; and Mr. Browning's quick sense of both + contrast and analogy inspired the introduction of this emblem of repose + into his own picture of that peaceful, prosaic existence, and of the + ghastly spiritual conflict to which it had served as background. He + employed a good deal of perhaps strained ingenuity in the opening pages of + the work, in making the white cap foreshadow the red, itself the symbol of + liberty, and only indirectly connected with tragic events; and he would, I + think, have emphasized the irony of circumstance in a manner more + characteristic of himself, if he had laid his stress on the remoteness + from 'the madding crowd', and repeated Miss Thackeray's title. There can, + however, be no doubt that his poetic imagination, no less than his human + insight, was amply vindicated by his treatment of the story. + </p> + <p> + On leaving St.-Aubin he spent a month at Fontainebleau, in a house + situated on the outskirts of the forest; and here his principal indoor + occupation was reading the Greek dramatists, especially Aeschylus, to whom + he had returned with revived interest and curiosity. 'Red Cotton Nightcap + Country' was not begun till his return to London in the later autumn. It + was published in the early summer of 1873. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 17 + </h2> + <h3> + 1873-1878 + </h3> + <p> + London Life—Love of Music—Miss Egerton-Smith—Periodical + Nervous Exhaustion—Mers; 'Aristophanes' Apology'—'Agamemnon'—'The + Inn Album'—'Pacchiarotto and other Poems'—Visits to Oxford and + Cambridge—Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald—St. Andrews; Letter from + Professor Knight—In the Savoyard Mountains—Death of Miss + Egerton-Smith—'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of Croisic'—Selections + from his Works. + </p> + <p> + The period on which we have now entered, covering roughly the ten or + twelve years which followed the publication of 'The Ring and the Book', + was the fullest in Mr. Browning's life; it was that in which the varied + claims made by it on his moral, and above all his physical energies, found + in him the fullest power of response. He could rise early and go to bed + late—this, however, never from choice; and occupy every hour of the + day with work or pleasure, in a manner which his friends recalled + regretfully in later years, when of two or three engagements which ought + to have divided his afternoon, a single one—perhaps only the most + formally pressing—could be fulfilled. Soon after his final return to + England, while he still lived in comparative seclusion, certain habits of + friendly intercourse, often superficial, but always binding, had rooted + themselves in his life. London society, as I have also implied, opened + itself to him in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truer to say, + drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even before the + mellowing kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the least + substantial of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of the poet—for + a while the natural ambition of the man—found satisfaction in it. + For a short time, indeed, he entered into the fashionable routine of + country-house visiting. Besides the instances I have already given, and + many others which I may have forgotten, he was heard of, during the + earlier part of this decade, as the guest of Lord Carnarvon at Highclere + Castle, of Lord Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, of Lord Brownlow and his + mother, Lady Marian Alford, at Belton and Ashridge. Somewhat later, he + stayed with Mr. and Lady Alice Gaisford at a house they temporarily + occupied on the Sussex downs; with Mr. Cholmondeley at Condover, and, much + more recently, at Aynhoe Park with Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright. Kind and + pressing, and in themselves very tempting invitations of this nature came + to him until the end of his life; but he very soon made a practice of + declining them, because their acceptance could only renew for him the + fatigues of the London season, while the tantalizing beauty and repose of + the country lay before his eyes; but such visits, while they continued, + were one of the necessary social experiences which brought their grist to + his mill. + </p> + <p> + And now, in addition to the large social tribute which he received, and + had to pay, he was drinking in all the enjoyment, and incurring all the + fatigue which the London musical world could create for him. In Italy he + had found the natural home of the other arts. The one poem, 'Old Pictures + in Florence', is sufficiently eloquent of long communion with the old + masters and their works; and if his history in Florence and Rome had been + written in his own letters instead of those of his wife, they must have + held many reminiscences of galleries and studios, and of the places in + which pictures are bought and sold. But his love for music was as + certainly starved as the delight in painting and sculpture was nourished; + and it had now grown into a passion, from the indulgence of which he + derived, as he always declared, some of the most beneficent influences of + his life. It would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that he attended + every important concert of the season, whether isolated or given in a + course. There was no engagement possible or actual, which did not yield to + the discovery of its clashing with the day and hour fixed for one of + these. His frequent companion on such occasions was Miss Egerton-Smith. + </p> + <p> + Miss Smith became only known to Mr. Browning's general acquaintance + through the dedicatory 'A. E. S.' of 'La Saisiaz'; but she was, at the + time of her death, one of his oldest women friends. He first met her as a + young woman in Florence when she was visiting there; and the love for and + proficiency in music soon asserted itself as a bond of sympathy between + them. They did not, however, see much of each other till he had finally + left Italy, and she also had made her home in London. She there led a + secluded life, although free from family ties, and enjoying a large income + derived from the ownership of an important provincial paper. Mr. Browning + was one of the very few persons whose society she cared to cultivate; and + for many years the common musical interest took the practical, and for + both of them convenient form, of their going to concerts together. After + her death, in the autumn of 1877, he almost mechanically renounced all the + musical entertainments to which she had so regularly accompanied him. The + special motive and special facility were gone—she had been wont to + call for him in her carriage; the habit was broken; there would have been + first pain, and afterwards an unwelcome exertion in renewing it. Time was + also beginning to sap his strength, while society, and perhaps friendship, + were making increasing claims upon it. It may have been for this same + reason that music after a time seemed to pass out of his life altogether. + Yet its almost sudden eclipse was striking in the case of one who not only + had been so deeply susceptible to its emotional influences, so conversant + with its scientific construction and its multitudinous forms, but who was + acknowledged as 'musical' by those who best knew the subtle and complex + meaning of that often misused term. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning could do all that I have said during the period through which + we are now following him; but he could not quite do it with impunity. Each + winter brought its searching attack of cold and cough; each summer reduced + him to the state of nervous prostration or physical apathy of which I have + already spoken, and which at once rendered change imperative, and the + exertion of seeking it almost intolerable. His health and spirits + rebounded at the first draught of foreign air; the first breath from an + English cliff or moor might have had the same result. But the remembrance + of this fact never nerved him to the preliminary effort. The conviction + renewed itself with the close of every season, that the best thing which + could happen to him would be to be left quiet at home; and his + disinclination to face even the idea of moving equally hampered his sister + in her endeavour to make timely arrangements for their change of abode. + </p> + <p> + This special craving for rest helped to limit the area from which their + summer resort could be chosen. It precluded all idea of 'pension'-life, + hence of any much-frequented spot in Switzerland or Germany. It was + tacitly understood that the shortening days were not to be passed in + England. Italy did not yet associate itself with the possibilities of a + moderately short absence; the resources of the northern French coast were + becoming exhausted; and as the August of 1874 approached, the question of + how and where this and the following months were to be spent was, perhaps, + more than ever a perplexing one. It was now Miss Smith who became the + means of its solution. She had more than once joined Mr. and Miss Browning + at the seaside. She was anxious this year to do so again, and she + suggested for their meeting a quiet spot called Mers, almost adjoining the + fashionable Treport, but distinct from it. It was agreed that they should + try it; and the experiment, which they had no reason to regret, opened + also in some degree a way out of future difficulties. Mers was young, and + had the defect of its quality. Only one desirable house was to be found + there; and the plan of joint residence became converted into one of joint + housekeeping, in which Mr. and Miss Browning at first refused to concur, + but which worked so well that it was renewed in the three ensuing summers: + Miss Smith retaining the initiative in the choice of place, her friends + the right of veto upon it. They stayed again together in 1875 at Villers, + on the coast of Normandy; in 1876 at the Isle of Arran; in 1877 at a house + called La Saisiaz—Savoyard for the sun—in the Saleve district + near Geneva. + </p> + <p> + The autumn months of 1874 were marked for Mr. Browning by an important + piece of work: the production of 'Aristophanes' Apology'. It was far + advanced when he returned to London in November, after a visit to Antwerp, + where his son was studying art under M. Heyermans; and its much later + appearance must have been intended to give breathing time to the readers + of 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. Mr. Browning subsequently admitted that + he sometimes, during these years, allowed active literary occupation to + interfere too much with the good which his holiday might have done him; + but the temptations to literary activity were this time too great to be + withstood. The house occupied by him at Mers (Maison Robert) was the last + of the straggling village, and stood on a rising cliff. In front was the + open sea; beyond it a long stretch of down; everywhere comparative + solitude. Here, in uninterrupted quiet, and in a room devoted to his use, + Mr. Browning would work till the afternoon was advanced, and then set + forth on a long walk over the cliffs, often in the face of a wind which, + as he wrote of it at the time, he could lean against as if it were a wall. + And during this time he was living, not only in his work, but with the man + who had inspired it. The image of Aristophanes, in the half-shamed + insolence, the disordered majesty, in which he is placed before the + reader's mind, was present to him from the first moment in which the + Defence was conceived. What was still more interesting, he could see him, + hear him, think with him, speak for him, and still inevitably condemn him. + No such instance of always ingenious, and sometimes earnest pleading + foredoomed to complete discomfiture, occurs in Mr. Browning's works. + </p> + <p> + To Aristophanes he gave the dramatic sympathy which one lover of life can + extend to another, though that other unduly extol its lower forms. To + Euripides he brought the palm of the higher truth, to his work the tribute + of the more pathetic human emotion. Even these for a moment ministered to + the greatness of Aristophanes, in the tear shed by him to the memory of + his rival, in the hour of his own triumph; and we may be quite sure that + when Mr. Browning depicted that scene, and again when he translated the + great tragedian's words, his own eyes were dimmed. Large tears fell from + them, and emotion choked his voice, when he first read aloud the + transcript of the 'Herakles' to a friend, who was often privileged to hear + him. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's deep feeling for the humanities of Greek literature, and + his almost passionate love for the language, contrasted strongly with his + refusal to regard even the first of Greek writers as models of literary + style. The pretensions raised for them on this ground were inconceivable + to him; and his translation of the 'Agamemnon', published 1877, was partly + made, I am convinced, for the pleasure of exposing these claims, and of + rebuking them. His preface to the transcript gives evidence of this. The + glee with which he pointed to it when it first appeared was no less + significant. + </p> + <p> + At Villers, in 1875, he only corrected the proofs of 'The Inn Album' for + publication in November. When the party started for the Isle of Arran, in + the autumn of 1876, the 'Pacchiarotto' volume had already appeared. + </p> + <p> + When Mr. Browning discontinued his short-lived habit of visiting away from + home, he made an exception in favour of the Universities. His occasional + visits to Oxford and Cambridge were maintained till the very end of his + life, with increasing frequency in the former case; and the days spent at + Balliol and Trinity afforded him as unmixed a pleasure as was compatible + with the interruption of his daily habits, and with a system of + hospitality which would detain him for many hours at table. A vivid + picture of them is given in two letters, dated January 20 and March 10, + 1877, and addressed to one of his constant correspondents, Mrs. + Fitz-Gerald, of Shalstone Manor, Buckingham. + </p> + <p> + Dear Friend, I have your letter of yesterday, and thank you all I can for + its goodness and graciousness to me unworthy . . . I returned on Thursday—the + hospitality of our Master being not easy to set aside. But to begin with + the beginning: the passage from London to Oxford was exceptionally + prosperous—the train was full of men my friends. I was welcomed on + arriving by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms,—then came the + pleasant meeting with Jowett who at once took me to tea with his other + guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London, Dean of + Westminster, the Airlies, Cardwells, male and female. Then came the + banquet—(I enclose you the plan having no doubt that you will + recognise the name of many an acquaintance: please return it)—and, + the dinner done, speechifying set in vigorously. The Archbishop proposed + the standing 'Floreat domus de Balliolo'—to which the Master made + due and amusing answer, himself giving the health of the Primate. Lord + Coleridge, in a silvery speech, drank to the University, responded to by + the Vice-Chancellor. I forget who proposed the visitors—the Bishop + of London, perhaps Lord Cardwell. Professor Smith gave the two Houses of + Parliament,—Jowett, the Clergy, coupling with it the name of your + friend Mr. Rogers—on whom he showered every kind of praise, and Mr. + Rogers returned thanks very characteristically and pleasantly. Lord + Lansdowne drank to the Bar (Mr. Bowen), Lord Camperdown to—I really + forget what: Mr. Green to Literature and Science delivering a most + undeserved eulogium on myself, with a more rightly directed one on Arnold, + Swinburne, and the old pride of Balliol, Clough: this was cleverly and + almost touchingly answered by dear Mat Arnold. Then the Dean of + Westminster gave the Fellows and Scholars—and then—twelve + o'clock struck. We were, counting from the time of preliminary assemblage, + six hours and a half engaged: <i>fully</i> five and a half nailed to our + chairs at the table: but the whole thing was brilliant, genial, and + suggestive of many and various thoughts to me—and there was a + warmth, earnestness, and yet refinement about it which I never experienced + in any previous public dinner. Next morning I breakfasted with Jowett and + his guests, found that return would be difficult: while as the young men + were to return on Friday there would be no opposition to my departure on + Thursday. The morning was dismal with rain, but after luncheon there was a + chance of getting a little air, and I walked for more than two hours, then + heard service in New Coll.—then dinner again: my room had been + prepared in the Master's house. So, on Thursday, after yet another + breakfast, I left by the noon-day train, after all sorts of kindly offices + from the Master. . . . No reporters were suffered to be present—the + account in yesterday's Times was furnished by one or more of the guests; + it is quite correct as far as it goes. There were, I find, certain little + paragraphs which must have been furnished by 'guessers': Swinburne, set + down as present—was absent through his Father's illness: the + Cardinal also excused himself as did the Bishop of Salisbury and others. . + . . Ever yours R. Browning. + </p> + <p> + The second letter, from Cambridge, was short and written in haste, at the + moment of Mr. Browning's departure; but it tells the same tale of general + kindness and attention. Engagements for no less than six meals had + absorbed the first day of the visit. The occasion was that of Professor + Joachim's investiture with his Doctor's degree; and Mr. Browning declares + that this ceremony, the concert given by the great violinist, and his + society, were 'each and all' worth the trouble of the journey. He himself + was to receive the Cambridge degree of LL.D. in 1879, the Oxford D.C.L. in + 1882. A passage in another letter addressed to the same friend, refers + probably to a practical reminiscence of 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country', + which enlivened the latter experience, and which Mrs. Fitz-Gerald had + witnessed with disapprobation.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * An actual red cotton nightcap had been made to flutter + down on to the Poet's head. +</pre> + <p> + . . . You are far too hard on the very harmless drolleries of the young + men, licensed as they are moreover by immemorial usage. Indeed there used + to be a regularly appointed jester, 'Filius Terrae' he was called, whose + business it was to jibe and jeer at the honoured ones, by way of reminder + that all human glories are merely gilded bubbles and must not be fancied + metal. You saw that the Reverend Dons escaped no more than the poor Poet—or + rather I should say than myself the poor Poet—for I was pleased to + observe with what attention they listened to the Newdigate. . . . Ever + affectionately yours, R. Browning. + </p> + <p> + In 1875 he was unanimously nominated by its Independent Club, to the + office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1877 he again + received the offer of the Rectorship of St. Andrews, couched in very + urgent and flattering terms. A letter addressed to him from this + University by Dr. William Knight, Professor of Moral Philosophy there, + which I have his permission to publish, bears witness to what had long + been and was always to remain a prominent fact of Mr. Browning's literary + career: his great influence on the minds of the rising generation of his + countrymen. + </p> + <p> + The University, St. Andrews N.B.: Nov. 17, 1877. + </p> + <p> + My dear Sir,—. . . The students of this University, in which I have + the honour to hold office, have nominated you as their Lord Rector; and + intend unanimously, I am told, to elect you to that office on Thursday. + </p> + <p> + I believe that hitherto no Rector has been chosen by the undivided + suffrage of any Scottish University. They have heard however that you are + unable to accept the office: and your committee, who were deeply + disappointed to learn this afternoon of the way in which you have been + informed of their intentions, are, I believe, writing to you on the + subject. So keen is their regret that they intend respectfully to wait + upon you on Tuesday morning by deputation, and ask if you cannot waive + your difficulties in deference to their enthusiasm, and allow them to + proceed with your election. + </p> + <p> + Their suffrage may, I think, be regarded as one sign of how the thoughtful + youth of Scotland estimate the work you have done in the world of letters. + </p> + <p> + And permit me to say that while these Rectorial elections in the other + Universities have frequently turned on local questions, or been inspired + by political partisanship, St. Andrews has honourably sought to choose men + distinguished for literary eminence, and to make the Rectorship a tribute + at once of intellectual and moral esteem. + </p> + <p> + May I add that when the 'perfervidum ingenium' of our northern race takes + the form not of youthful hero-worship, but of loyal admiration and + respectful homage, it is a very genuine affair. In the present instance I + may say it is no mere outburst of young undisciplined enthusiasm, but an + honest expression of intellectual and moral indebtedness, the genuine and + distinct tribute of many minds that have been touched to some higher + issues by what you have taught them. They do not presume to speak of your + place in English literature. They merely tell you by this proffered honour + (the highest in their power to bestow), how they have felt your influence + over them. + </p> + <p> + My own obligations to you, and to the author of Aurora Leigh, are such, + that of them 'silence is golden'. Yours ever gratefully. William Knight. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning was deeply touched and gratified by these professions of + esteem. He persisted nevertheless in his refusal. The Glasgow nomination + had also been declined by him. + </p> + <p> + On August 17, 1877, he wrote to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald from La Saisiaz: + </p> + <p> + 'How lovely is this place in its solitude and seclusion, with its trees + and shrubs and flowers, and above all its live mountain stream which + supplies three fountains, and two delightful baths, a marvel of delicate + delight framed in with trees—I bathe there twice a day—and + then what wonderful views from the chalet on every side! Geneva lying + under us, with the lake and the whole plain bounded by the Jura and our + own Saleve, which latter seems rather close behind our house, and yet + takes a hard hour and a half to ascend—all this you can imagine + since you know the environs of the town; the peace and quiet move me the + most—And I fancy I shall drowse out the two months or more, doing no + more of serious work than reading—and that is virtuous renunciation + of the glorious view to my right here—as I sit aerially like + Euripides, and see the clouds come and go and the view change in + correspondence with them. It will help me to get rid of the pain which + attaches itself to the recollections of Lucerne and Berne "in the old days + when the Greeks suffered so much," as Homer says. But a very real and + sharp pain touched me here when I heard of the death of poor Virginia + March whom I knew particularly, and parted with hardly a fortnight ago, + leaving her affectionate and happy as ever. The tones of her voice as on + one memorable occasion she ejaculated repeatedly 'Good friend!' are fresh + still. Poor Virginia! . . .' + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning was more than quiescent during this stay in the Savoyard + mountains. He was unusually depressed, and unusually disposed to regard + the absence from home as a banishment; and he tried subsequently to + account for this condition by the shadow which coming trouble sometimes + casts before it. It was more probably due to the want of the sea air which + he had enjoyed for so many years, and to that special oppressive heat of + the Swiss valleys which ascends with them to almost their highest level. + When he said that the Saleve seemed close behind the house, he was saying + in other words that the sun beat back from, and the air was intercepted by + it. We see, nevertheless, in his description of the surrounding scenery, a + promise of the contemplative delight in natural beauty to be henceforth so + conspicuous in his experience, and which seemed a new feature in it. He + had hitherto approached every living thing with curious and sympathetic + observation—this hardly requires saying of one who had animals for + his first and always familiar friends. Flowers also attracted him by their + perfume. But what he loved in nature was essentially its prefiguring of + human existence, or its echo of it; and it never appeared, in either his + works or his conversation, that he was much impressed by its inanimate + forms—by even those larger phenomena of mountain and cloud-land on + which the latter dwells. Such beauty as most appealed to him he had left + behind with the joys and sorrows of his Italian life, and it had almost + inevitably passed out of his consideration. During years of his residence + in London he never thought of the country as a source of pleasurable + emotions, other than those contingent on renewed health; and the places to + which he resorted had often not much beyond their health-giving qualities + to recommend them; his appetite for the beautiful had probably dwindled + for lack of food. But when a friend once said to him: 'You have not a + great love for nature, have you?' he had replied: 'Yes, I have, but I love + men and women better;' and the admission, which conveyed more than it + literally expressed, would have been true I believe at any, up to the + present, period of his history. Even now he did not cease to love men and + women best; but he found increasing enjoyment in the beauties of nature, + above all as they opened upon him on the southern slopes of the Alps; and + the delight of the aesthetic sense merged gradually in the satisfied + craving for pure air and brilliant sunshine which marked his final + struggle for physical life. A ring of enthusiasm comes into his letters + from the mountains, and deepens as the years advance; doubtless enhanced + by the great—perhaps too great—exhilaration which the Alpine + atmosphere produced, but also in large measure independent of it. Each new + place into which the summer carries him he declares more beautiful than + the last. It possibly was so. + </p> + <p> + A touch of autumnal freshness had barely crept into the atmosphere of the + Saleve, when a moral thunderbolt fell on the little group of persons + domiciled at its base: Miss Egerton-Smith died, in what had seemed for her + unusually good health, in the act of preparing for a mountain excursion + with her friends—the words still almost on her lips in which she had + given some directions for their comfort. Mr. Browning's impressionable + nervous system was for a moment paralyzed by the shock. It revived in all + the emotional and intellectual impulses which gave birth to 'La Saisiaz'. + </p> + <p> + This poem contains, besides its personal reference and association, + elements of distinctive biographical interest. It is the author's first—as + also last—attempt to reconstruct his hope of immortality by a + rational process based entirely on the fundamental facts of his own + knowledge and consciousness—God and the human soul; and while the + very assumption of these facts, as basis for reasoning, places him at + issue with scientific thought, there is in his way of handling them a + tribute to the scientific spirit, perhaps foreshadowed in the beautiful + epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae', but of which there is no trace in his + earlier religious works. It is conclusive both in form and matter as to + his heterodox attitude towards Christianity. He was no less, in his way, a + Christian when he wrote 'La Saisiaz' than when he published 'A Death in + the Desert' and 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; or at any period + subsequent to that in which he accepted without questioning what he had + learned at his mother's knee. He has repeatedly written or declared in the + words of Charles Lamb:* 'If Christ entered the room I should fall on my + knees;' and again, in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander of men, and + <i>he</i> was no man.' He has even added: 'If he had been, he would have + been an impostor.' But the arguments, in great part negative, set forth in + 'La Saisiaz' for the immortality of the soul, leave no place for the idea, + however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the subject. Christ + remained for Mr. Browning a mystery and a message of Divine Love, but no + messenger of Divine intention towards mankind. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * These words have more significance when taken with their + context. 'If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we + should all rise up to meet him; but if that Person [meaning + Christ] was to come into the room, we should all fall down + and try to kiss the hem of his garment.' +</pre> + <p> + The dialogue between Fancy and Reason is not only an admission of + uncertainty as to the future of the Soul: it is a plea for it; and as such + it gathers up into its few words of direct statement, threads of reasoning + which have been traceable throughout Mr. Browning's work. In this plea for + uncertainty lies also a full and frank acknowledgment of the value of the + earthly life; and as interpreted by his general views, that value asserts + itself, not only in the means of probation which life affords, but in its + existing conditions of happiness. No one, he declares, possessing the + certainty of a future state would patiently and fully live out the + present; and since the future can be only the ripened fruit of the + present, its promise would be neutralized, as well as actual experience + dwarfed, by a definite revelation. Nor, conversely, need the want of a + certified future depress the present spiritual and moral life. It is in + the nature of the Soul that it would suffer from the promise. The + existence of God is a justification for hope. And since the certainty + would be injurious to the Soul, hence destructive to itself, the doubt—in + other words, the hope—becomes a sufficient approach to, a working + substitute for it. It is pathetic to see how in spite of the convictions + thus rooted in Mr. Browning's mind, the expressed craving for more + knowledge, for more light, will now and then escape him. + </p> + <p> + Even orthodox Christianity gives no assurance of reunion to those whom + death has separated. It is obvious that Mr. Browning's poetic creed could + hold no conviction regarding it. He hoped for such reunion in proportion + as he wished. There must have been moments in his life when the wish in + its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. 'Prospice' appears to prove + this. But the wide range of imagination, no less than the lack of + knowledge, forbade in him any forecast of the possibilities of the life to + come. He believed that if granted, it would be an advance on the present—an + accession of knowledge if not an increase of happiness. He was satisfied + that whatever it gave, and whatever it withheld, it would be good. In his + normal condition this sufficed to him. + </p> + <p> + 'La Saisiaz' appeared in the early summer of 1878, and with it 'The Two + Poets of Croisic', which had been written immediately after it. The + various incidents of this poem are strictly historical; they lead the way + to a characteristic utterance of Mr. Browning's philosophy of life to + which I shall recur later. + </p> + <p> + In 1872 Mr. Browning had published a first series of selections from his + works; it was to be followed by a second in 1880. In a preface to the + earlier volume, he indicates the plan which he has followed in the choice + and arrangement of poems; and some such intention runs also through the + second; since he declined a suggestion made to him for the introduction or + placing of a special poem, on the ground of its not conforming to the end + he had in view. It is difficult, in the one case as in the other, to + reconstruct the imagined personality to which his preface refers; and his + words on the later occasion pointed rather to that idea of a chord of + feeling which is raised by the correspondence of the first and last poems + of the respective groups. But either clue may be followed with interest. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 18 + </h2> + <h3> + 1878-1884 + </h3> + <p> + He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald—Venice—Favourite + Alpine Retreats—Mrs. Arthur Bronson—Life in Venice—A + Tragedy at Saint-Pierre—Mr. Cholmondeley—Mr. Browning's + Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow—'Dramatic + Idyls'—'Jocoseria'—'Ferishtah's Fancies'. + </p> + <p> + The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. + Browning's habits and experience. It impelled him finally to break with + the associations of the last seventeen autumns, which he remembered more + in their tedious or painful circumstances than in the unexciting pleasure + and renewed physical health which he had derived from them. He was weary + of the ever-recurring effort to uproot himself from his home life, only to + become stationary in some more or less uninteresting northern spot. The + always latent desire for Italy sprang up in him, and with it the often + present thought and wish to give his sister the opportunity of seeing it. + </p> + <p> + Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them both too + well; but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, though as usual + reluctantly, and not till the last moment, that they should move + southwards in the August of 1878. Their route lay over the Spluegen; and + having heard of a comfortable hotel near the summit of the Pass, they + agreed to remain there till the heat had sufficiently abated to allow of + the descent into Lombardy. The advantages of this first arrangement + exceeded their expectations. It gave them solitude without the sense of + loneliness. A little stream of travellers passed constantly over the + mountain, and they could shake hands with acquaintances at night, and know + them gone in the morning. They dined at the table d'hote, but took all + other meals alone, and slept in a detached wing or 'dependance' of the + hotel. Their daily walks sometimes carried them down to the Via Mala; + often to the top of the ascent, where they could rest, looking down into + Italy; and would even be prolonged over a period of five hours and an + extent of seventeen miles. Now, as always, the mountain air stimulated Mr. + Browning's physical energy; and on this occasion it also especially + quickened his imaginative powers. He was preparing the first series of + 'Dramatic Idylls'; and several of these, including 'Ivan Ivanovitch', were + produced with such rapidity that Miss Browning refused to countenance a + prolonged stay on the mountain, unless he worked at a more reasonable + rate. + </p> + <p> + They did not linger on their way to Asolo and Venice, except for a night's + rest on the Lake of Como and two days at Verona. In their successive + journeys through Northern Italy they visited by degrees all its notable + cities, and it would be easy to recall, in order and detail, most of these + yearly expeditions. But the account of them would chiefly resolve itself + into a list of names and dates; for Mr. Browning had seldom a new + impression to receive, even from localities which he had not seen before. + I know that he and his sister were deeply struck by the deserted grandeurs + of Ravenna; and that it stirred in both of them a memorable sensation to + wander as they did for a whole day through the pinewoods consecrated by + Dante. I am nevertheless not sure that when they performed the repeated + round of picture-galleries and palaces, they were not sometimes simply + paying their debt to opportunity, and as much for each other's sake as for + their own. Where all was Italy, there was little to gain or lose in one + memorial of greatness, one object of beauty, visited or left unseen. But + in Asolo, even in Venice, Mr. Browning was seeking something more: the + remembrance of his own actual and poetic youth. How far he found it in the + former place we may infer from a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald. + </p> + <p> + Sept. 28, 1878. + </p> + <p> + And from 'Asolo', at last, dear friend! So can dreams come <i>false</i>.—S., + who has been writing at the opposite side of the table, has told you about + our journey and adventures, such as they were: but she cannot tell you the + feelings with which I revisit this—to me—memorable place after + above forty years' absence,—such things have begun and ended with me + in the interval! It was <i>too</i> strange when we reached the ruined + tower on the hill-top yesterday, and I said 'Let me try if the echo still + exists which I discovered here,' (you can produce it from only <i>one</i> + particular spot on a remainder of brickwork—) and thereupon it + answered me plainly as ever, after all the silence: for some children from + the adjoining 'podere', happening to be outside, heard my voice and its + result—and began trying to perform the feat—calling 'Yes, yes'—all + in vain: so, perhaps, the mighty secret will die with me! We shall + probably stay here a day or two longer,—the air is so pure, the + country so attractive: but we must go soon to Venice, stay our allotted + time there, and then go homeward: you will of course address letters to + Venice, not this place: it is a pleasure I promise myself that, on + arriving I shall certainly hear you speak in a letter which I count upon + finding. + </p> + <p> + The old inn here, to which I would fain have betaken myself, is gone—levelled + to the ground: I remember it was much damaged by a recent earthquake, and + the cracks and chasms may have threatened a downfall. This Stella d'Oro + is, however, much such an unperverted 'locanda' as its predecessor—primitive + indeed are the arrangements and unsophisticate the ways: but there is + cleanliness, abundance of goodwill, and the sweet Italian smile at every + mistake: we get on excellently. To be sure never was such a perfect + fellow-traveller, for my purposes, as S., so that I have no subject of + concern—if things suit me they suit her—and vice-versa. I + daresay she will have told you how we trudged together, this morning to + Possagno—through a lovely country: how we saw all the wonders—and + a wonder of detestability is the paint-performance of the great man!—and + how, on our return, we found the little town enjoying high market day, and + its privilege of roaring and screaming over a bargain. It confuses me + altogether,—but at Venice I may write more comfortably. You will + till then, Dear Friend, remember me ever as yours affectionately, Robert + Browning. + </p> + <p> + If the tone of this does not express disappointment, it has none of the + rapture which his last visit was to inspire. The charm which forty years + of remembrance had cast around the little city on the hill was dispelled + for, at all events, the time being. The hot weather and dust-covered + landscape, with the more than primitive accommodation of which he spoke in + a letter to another friend, may have contributed something to this result. + </p> + <p> + At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects. A London + acquaintance, who passed them on their way to Italy, had recommended a + cool and quiet hotel there, the Albergo dell' Universo. The house, Palazzo + Brandolin-Rota, was situated on the shady side of the Grand Canal, just + below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge. The open stretches of the + Giudecca lay not far behind; and a scrap of garden and a clean and open + little street made pleasant the approach from back and side. It + accommodated few persons in proportion to its size, and fewer still took + up their abode there; for it was managed by a lady of good birth and + fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been; and her husband, a + retired Austrian officer, and two grown-up daughters did not lighten her + task. Every year the fortunes sank lower; the upper storey of the house + was already falling into decay, and the fine old furniture passing into + the brokers' or private buyers' hands. It still, however, afforded + sufficiently comfortable, and, by reason of its very drawbacks, desirable + quarters to Mr. Browning. It perhaps turned the scale in favour of his + return to Venice; for the lady whose hospitality he was to enjoy there was + as yet unknown to him; and nothing would have induced him to enter, with + his eyes open, one of the English-haunted hotels, in which acquaintance, + old and new, would daily greet him in the public rooms or jostle him in + the corridors. + </p> + <p> + He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight; their + programme did not this year include a longer stay; but it gave them time + to decide that no place could better suit them for an autumn holiday than + Venice, or better lend itself to a preparatory sojourn among the Alps; and + the plan of their next, and, though they did not know it, many a following + summer, was thus sketched out before the homeward journey had begun. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even while resting from it; if + indeed he did rest entirely on this occasion. He consulted a Russian lady + whom he met at the hotel, on the names he was introducing in 'Ivan + Ivanovitch'. It would be interesting to know what suggestions or + corrections she made, and how far they adapted themselves to the rhythm + already established, or compelled changes in it; but the one alternative + would as little have troubled him as the other. Mrs. Browning told Mr. + Prinsep that her husband could never alter the wording of a poem without + rewriting it, indeed, practically converting it into another; though he + more than once tried to do so at her instigation. But to the end of his + life he could at any moment recast a line or passage for the sake of + greater correctness, and leave all that was essential in it untouched. + </p> + <p> + Seven times more in the eleven years which remained to him, Mr. Browning + spent the autumn in Venice. Once also, in 1882, he had proceeded towards + it as far as Verona, when the floods which marked the autumn of that year + arrested his farther course. Each time he had halted first in some more or + less elevated spot, generally suggested by his French friend, Monsieur + Dourlans, himself an inveterate wanderer, whose inclinations also tempted + him off the beaten track. The places he most enjoyed were Saint-Pierre la + Chartreuse, and Gressoney Saint-Jean, where he stayed respectively in 1881 + and 1882, 1883 and 1885. Both of these had the drawbacks, and what might + easily have been the dangers, of remoteness from the civilized world. But + this weighed with him so little, that he remained there in each case till + the weather had broken, though there was no sheltered conveyance in which + he and his sister could travel down; and on the later occasions at least, + circumstances might easily have combined to prevent their departure for an + indefinite time. He became, indeed, so attached to Gressoney, with its + beautiful outlook upon Monte Rosa, that nothing I believe would have + hindered his returning, or at least contemplating a return to it, but the + great fatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain, by a path + which made walking, wherever possible, the easier course. They did walk <i>down</i> + it in the early October of 1885, and completed the hard seven hours' + trudge to San Martino d'Aosta, without an atom of refreshment or a + minute's rest. + </p> + <p> + One of the great attractions of Saint-Pierre was the vicinity of the + Grande Chartreuse, to which Mr. Browning made frequent expeditions, + staying there through the night in order to hear the midnight mass. Miss + Browning also once attempted the visit, but was not allowed to enter the + monastery. She slept in the adjoining convent. + </p> + <p> + The brother and sister were again at the Universo in 1879, 1880, and 1881; + but the crash was rapidly approaching, and soon afterwards it came. The + old Palazzo passed into other hands, and after a short period of private + ownership was consigned to the purposes of an Art Gallery. + </p> + <p> + In 1880, however, they had been introduced by Mrs. Story to an American + resident, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, and entered into most friendly relations + with her; and when, after a year's interval, they were again contemplating + an autumn in Venice, she placed at their disposal a suite of rooms in the + Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, which formed a supplement to her own house—making + the offer with a kindly urgency which forbade all thought of declining it. + They inhabited these for a second time in 1885, keeping house for + themselves in the simple but comfortable foreign manner they both so well + enjoyed, only dining and spending the evening with their friend. But when, + in 1888, they were going, as they thought, to repeat the arrangement, they + found, to their surprise, a little apartment prepared for them under Mrs. + Bronson's own roof. This act of hospitality involved a special kindness on + her part, of which Mr. Browning only became aware at the close of a + prolonged stay; and a sense of increased gratitude added itself to the + affectionate regard with which his hostess had already inspired both his + sister and him. So far as he is concerned, the fact need only be + indicated. It is fully expressed in the preface to 'Asolando'. + </p> + <p> + During the first and fresher period of Mr. Browning's visits to Venice, he + found a passing attraction in its society. It held an historical element + which harmonized well with the decayed magnificence of the city, its + old-world repose, and the comparatively simple modes of intercourse still + prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's 'salon' was hospitably open whenever her + health allowed; but her natural refinement, and the conservatism which so + strongly marks the higher class of Americans, preserved it from the + heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreign sociability so often assumes. + Very interesting, even important names lent their prestige to her circle; + and those of Don Carlos and his family, of Prince and Princess Iturbide, + of Prince and Princess Metternich, and of Princess Montenegro, were on the + list of her 'habitues', and, in the case of the royal Spaniards, of her + friends. It need hardly be said that the great English poet, with his fast + spreading reputation and his infinite social charm, was kindly welcomed + and warmly appreciated amongst them. + </p> + <p> + English and American acquaintances also congregated in Venice, or passed + through it from London, Florence, and Rome. Those resident in Italy could + make their visits coincide with those of Mr. Browning and his sister, or + undertake the journey for the sake of seeing them; while the outward + conditions of life were such as to render friendly intercourse more + satisfactory, and common social civilities less irksome than they could be + at home. Mr. Browning was, however, already too advanced in years, too + familiar with everything which the world can give, to be long affected by + the novelty of these experiences. It was inevitable that the need of rest, + though often for the moment forgotten, should assert itself more and more. + He gradually declined on the society of a small number of resident or + semi-resident friends; and, due exception being made for the hospitalities + of his temporary home, became indebted to the kindness of Sir Henry and + Lady Layard, of Mr. and Mrs. Curtis of Palazzo Barbaro, and of Mr. and + Mrs. Frederic Eden, for most of the social pleasure and comfort of his + later residences in Venice. + </p> + <p> + Part of a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald gives an insight into the character + of his life there: all the stronger that it was written under a temporary + depression which it partly serves to explain. + </p> + <p> + Albergo dell' Universo, Venezia, Italia: Sept. 24, '81. + </p> + <p> + 'Dear Friend,—On arriving here I found your letter to my great + satisfaction—and yesterday brought the 'Saturday Review'—for + which, many thanks. + </p> + <p> + 'We left our strange but lovely place on the 18th, reaching Chambery at + evening,—stayed the next day there,—walking, among other + diversions to "Les Charmettes", the famous abode of Rousseau—kept + much as when he left it: I visited it with my wife perhaps twenty-five + years ago, and played so much of "Rousseau's Dream" as could be effected + on his antique harpsichord: this time I attempted the same feat, but only + two notes or thereabouts out of the octave would answer the touch. Next + morning we proceeded to Turin, and on Wednesday got here, in the middle of + the last night of the Congress Carnival—rowing up the Canal to our + Albergo through a dazzling blaze of lights and throng of boats,—there + being, if we are told truly, 50,000 strangers in the city. Rooms had been + secured for us, however: and the festivities are at an end, to my great + joy,—for Venice is resuming its old quiet aspect—the only one + I value at all. Our American friends wanted to take us in their gondola to + see the principal illuminations <i>after</i> the "Serenade", which was not + over before midnight—but I was contented with <i>that</i>—being + tired and indisposed for talking, and, having seen and heard quite enough + from our own balcony, went to bed: S. having betaken her to her own room + long before. + </p> + <p> + 'Next day we took stock of our acquaintances,—found that the Storys, + on whom we had counted for company, were at Vallombrosa, though the two + sons have a studio here—other friends are in sufficient number + however—and last evening we began our visits by a very classical one—to + the Countess Mocenigo, in her palace which Byron occupied: she is a + charming widow since two years,—young, pretty and of the prettiest + manners: she showed us all the rooms Byron had lived in,—and I wrote + my name in her album <i>on</i> the desk himself wrote the last canto of + 'Ch. Harold' and 'Beppo' upon. There was a small party: we were taken and + introduced by the Layards who are kind as ever, and I met old friends—Lord + Aberdare, Charles Bowen, and others. While I write comes a deliciously + fresh 'bouquet' from Mrs. Bronson, an American lady,—in short we + shall find a week or two amusing enough; though—where are the + pinewoods, mountains and torrents, and wonderful air? Venice is under a + cloud,—dull and threatening,—though we were apprehensive of + heat, arriving, as we did, ten days earlier than last year. . . .' + </p> + <p> + The evening's programme was occasionally varied by a visit to one of the + theatres. The plays given were chiefly in the Venetian dialect, and needed + previous study for their enjoyment; but Mr. Browning assisted at one + musical performance which strongly appealed to his historical and artistic + sensibilities: that of the 'Barbiere' of Paisiello in the Rossini theatre + and in the presence of Wagner, which took place in the autumn of 1880. + </p> + <p> + Although the manner of his sojourn in the Italian city placed all the + resources of resident life at his command, Mr. Browning never abjured the + active habits of the English traveller. He daily walked with his sister, + as he did in the mountains, for walking's sake, as well as for the delight + of what his expeditions showed him; and the facilities which they supplied + for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mind one of the great + merits of his autumn residences in Italy. He explored Venice in all + directions, and learned to know its many points of beauty and interest, as + those cannot who believe it is only to be seen from a gondola; and when he + had visited its every corner, he fell back on a favourite stroll along the + Riva to the public garden and back again; never failing to leave the house + at about the same hour of the day. Later still, when a friend's gondola + was always at hand, and air and sunshine were the one thing needful, he + would be carried to the Lido, and take a long stretch on its farther + shore. + </p> + <p> + The letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, from which I have already quoted, + concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place at + Saint-Pierre just before his departure, and in which Mr. Browning's + intuitions had played a striking part. + </p> + <p> + 'And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence? Our + journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of the one mule of the + village being requisitioned by the 'Juge d'Instruction' from Grenoble, + come to enquire into a murder committed two days before. My sister and I + used once a day to walk for a couple of hours up a mountain-road of the + most lovely description, and stop at the summit whence we looked down upon + the minute hamlet of St.-Pierre d'Entremont,—even more secluded than + our own: then we got back to our own aforesaid. And in this Paradisial + place, they found, yesterday week, a murdered man—frightfully + mutilated—who had been caught apparently in the act of stealing + potatoes in a field: such a crime had never occurred in the memory of the + oldest of our folk. Who was the murderer is the mystery—whether the + field's owner—in his irritation at discovering the robber,—or + one of a band of similar 'charbonniers' (for they suppose the man to be a + Piedmontese of that occupation) remains to be proved: they began by + imprisoning the owner, who denies his guilt energetically. Now the odd + thing is, that, either the day of, or after the murder,—as I and S. + were looking at the utter solitude, I had the fancy "What should I do if I + suddenly came upon a dead body in this field? Go and proclaim it—and + subject myself to all the vexations inflicted by the French way of + procedure (which begins by assuming that you may be the criminal)—or + neglect an obvious duty, and return silently." I, of course, saw that the + former was the only proper course, whatever the annoyance involved. And, + all the while, there was just about to be the very same incident for the + trouble of somebody.' + </p> + <p> + Here the account breaks off; but writing again from the same place, August + 16, 1882, he takes up the suspended narrative with this question: + </p> + <p> + 'Did I tell you of what happened to me on the last day of my stay here + last year?' And after repeating the main facts continues as follows: + </p> + <p> + 'This morning, in the course of my walk, I entered into conversation with + two persons of whom I made enquiry myself. They said the accused man, a + simple person, had been locked up in a high chamber,—protesting his + innocence strongly,—and troubled in his mind by the affair + altogether and the turn it was taking, had profited by the gendarme's + negligence, and thrown himself out of the window—and so died, + continuing to the last to protest as before. My presentiment of what such + a person might have to undergo was justified you see—though I should + not in any case have taken <i>that</i> way of getting out of the + difficulty. The man added, "it was not he who committed the murder, but + the companions of the man, an Italian charcoal-burner, who owed him a + grudge, killed him, and dragged him to the field—filling his sack + with potatoes as if stolen, to give a likelihood that the field's owner + had caught him stealing and killed him,—so M. Perrier the greffier + told me." Enough of this grim story. + </p> + <p> + . . . . . + </p> + <p> + 'My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found: "Vouz + savez la croix au sommet de la colline? A cette distance de cela!" That is + precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me.' + </p> + <p> + A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3 clearly refers to some + comment of Mrs. Fitz-Gerald's on the peculiar nature of this presentiment: + </p> + <p> + 'No—I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the + thing that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of + ideas—<i>contraries</i> come into the mind as often as <i>similarities</i>—and + the peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jar + with them. I have often thought of the trouble that might have befallen me + if poor Miss Smith's death had happened the night before, when we were on + the mountain alone together—or next morning when we were on the + proposed excursion—only <i>then</i> we should have had companions.' + </p> + <p> + The letter then passes to other subjects. + </p> + <p> + 'This is the fifth magnificent day—like magnificence, unfit for + turning to much account—for we cannot walk till sunset. I had two + hours' walk, or nearly, before breakfast, however: It is the loveliest + country I ever had experience of, and we shall prolong our stay perhaps—apart + from the concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be glad + to apprehend no long journey—besides the annoyance of having to pass + Florence and Rome unvisited, for S.'s sake, I mean: even Naples would have + been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability. + </p> + <p> + 'Your "Academy" came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electric + eel, as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about the + Archbishop who has always been strangely kind to me.' + </p> + <p> + He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of October + with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the party assembled + there was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley's guests, a + young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of a dangerous + mountain without a guide, and who lost her life in the experiment. + </p> + <p> + A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show that even + in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning's patriotism did not go to sleep. + There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendship did not; + but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that they should be + largely absorbed by politics, though he followed the course of his + country's history as a necessary part of his own life. It needed a crisis + like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irish struggle, to + arouse him to a full emotional participation in current events. How deeply + he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen. + </p> + <p> + 'If the George Smiths are still with you, give them my love, and tell them + we shall expect to see them at Venice,—which was not so likely to be + the case when we were bound for Ischia. As for Lady Wolseley—one + dares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now; but my own pulses + beat pretty strongly when I open the day's newspaper—which, by some + new arrangement, reaches us, oftener than not, on the day after + publication. Where is your Bertie? I had an impassioned letter, a + fortnight ago, from a nephew of mine, who is in the second division + [battalion?] of the Black Watch; he was ordered to Edinburgh, and the + regiment not dispatched, after all,—it having just returned from + India; the poor fellow wrote in his despair "to know if I could do + anything!" He may be wanted yet: though nothing seems wanted in Egypt, so + capital appears to be the management.' + </p> + <p> + In 1879 Mr. Browning published the first series of his 'Dramatic Idyls'; + and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration through the + public mind. In 'La Saisiaz' and the accompanying poems he had + accomplished what was virtually a life's work. For he was approaching the + appointed limit of man's existence; and the poetic, which had been + nourished in him by the natural life—which had once outstripped its + developments, but on the whole remained subject to them—had + therefore, also, passed through the successive phases of individual + growth. He had been inspired as dramatic poet by the one avowed conviction + that little else is worth study but the history of a soul; and outward act + or circumstance had only entered into his creations as condition or + incident of the given psychological state. His dramatic imagination had + first, however unconsciously, sought its materials in himself; then + gradually been projected into the world of men and women, which his + widening knowledge laid open to him; it is scarcely necessary to say that + its power was only fully revealed when it left the remote regions of + poetical and metaphysical self-consciousness, to invoke the not less + mysterious and far more searching utterance of the general human heart. It + was a matter of course that in this expression of his dramatic genius, the + intellectual and emotional should exhibit the varying relations which are + developed by the natural life: that feeling should begin by doing the work + of thought, as in 'Saul', and thought end by doing the work of feeling, as + in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and that the two should alternate or combine in + proportioned intensity in such works of an intermediate period as 'Cleon', + 'A Death in the Desert', the 'Epistle of Karshish', and 'James Lee's + Wife'; the sophistical ingenuities of 'Bishop Blougram', and 'Sludge'; and + the sad, appealing tenderness of 'Andrea del Sarto' and 'The Worst of It'. + </p> + <p> + It was also almost inevitable that so vigorous a genius should sometimes + falsify calculations based on the normal life. The long-continued force + and freshness of Mr. Browning's general faculties was in itself a protest + against them. We saw without surprise that during the decade which + produced 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau', 'Fifine at the Fair', and 'Red + Cotton Nightcap Country', he could give us 'The Inn Album', with its + expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, rarely equalled, in the + whole range of his work: or those two unique creations of airy fancy and + passionate symbolic romance, 'Saint Martin's Summer', and 'Numpholeptos'. + It was no ground for astonishment that the creative power in him should + even ignore the usual period of decline, and defy, so far as is humanly + possible, its natural laws of modification. But in the 'Dramatic Idyls' he + did more than proceed with unflagging powers on a long-trodden, + distinctive course; he took a new departure. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined and + worked out his new group of poems; he presented it in a no less subtle and + complex form. But he gave it the added force of picturesque realization; + and this by means of incidents both powerful in themselves, and especially + suited for its development. It was only in proportion to this higher + suggestiveness that a startling situation ever seemed to him fit subject + for poetry. Where its interest and excitement exhausted themselves in the + external facts, it became, he thought, the property of the chronicler, but + supplied no material for the poet; and he often declined matter which had + been offered him for dramatic treatment because it belonged to the more + sensational category. + </p> + <p> + It is part of the vital quality of the 'Dramatic Idyls' that, in them, the + act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other. We see + the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimly striving to + recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this that the + psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such at least + is the case in 'Martin Relph', and the idealized Russian legend, 'Ivan + Ivanovitch'. The grotesque tragedy of 'Ned Bratts' has also its marked + psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader kind. + </p> + <p> + The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of 'Idyls', + 1880, and 'Jocoseria', 1883. In 'Ferishtah's Fancies', 1884, Mr. Browning + returned to his original manner, though carrying into it something of the + renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change. The lyrics which + alternate with its parables include some of the most tender, most + impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems. + </p> + <p> + The moral and religious opinions conveyed in this later volume may be + accepted without reserve as Mr. Browning's own, if we subtract from them + the exaggerations of the figurative and dramatic form. It is indeed easy + to recognize in them the under currents of his whole real and imaginative + life. They have also on one or two points an intrinsic value which will + justify a later allusion. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 19 + </h2> + <h3> + 1881-1887 + </h3> + <p> + The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey—His Attitude + towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald—Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. + Celia Thaxter—Letter to Miss Hickey; 'Strafford'—Shakspere and + Wordsworth Societies—Letters to Professor Knight—Appreciation + in Italy; Professor Nencioni—The Goldoni Sonnet—Mr. Barrett + Browning; Palazzo Manzoni—Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow—Mrs. + Bloomfield Moore—Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin—Loss + of old Friends—Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy—'Parleyings + with certain People of Importance in their Day'. + </p> + <p> + This Indian summer of Mr. Browning's genius coincided with the highest + manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, any + living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society + bearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. The idea arose + almost simultaneously in the mind of Dr., then Mr. Furnivall, and of Miss + E. H. Hickey. One day, in the July of 1881, as they were on their way to + Warwick Crescent to pay an appointed visit there, Miss Hickey strongly + expressed her opinion of the power and breadth of Mr. Browning's work; and + concluded by saying that much as she loved Shakespeare, she found in + certain aspects of Browning what even Shakespeare could not give her. Mr. + Furnivall replied to this by asking what she would say to helping him to + found a Browning Society; and it then appeared that Miss Hickey had + recently written to him a letter, suggesting that he should found one; but + that it had miscarried, or, as she was disposed to think, not been posted. + Being thus, at all events, agreed as to the fitness of the undertaking, + they immediately spoke of it to Mr. Browning, who at first treated the + project as a joke; but did not oppose it when once he understood it to be + serious. His only proviso was that he should remain neutral in respect to + its fulfilment. He refused even to give Mr. Furnivall the name or address + of any friends, whose interest in himself or his work might render their + co-operation probable. + </p> + <p> + This passive assent sufficed. A printed prospectus was now issued. About + two hundred members were soon secured. A committee was elected, of which + Mr. J. T. Nettleship, already well known as a Browning student, was one of + the most conspicuous members; and by the end of October a small Society + had come into existence, which held its inaugural meeting in the Botanic + Theatre of University College. Mr. Furnivall, its principal founder, and + responsible organizer, was Chairman of the Committee, and Miss E. H. + Hickey, the co-founder, was Honorary Secretary. When, two or three years + afterwards, illness compelled her to resign this position, it was assumed + by Mr. J. Dykes Campbell. + </p> + <p> + Although nothing could be more unpretending than the action of this + Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did not + begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation of a + Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a precedent + for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his work, or, as + some one termed it, for making a man a classic during his lifetime. But + this fact was not yet generally known; and meanwhile a curious + contradiction developed itself in the public mind. The outer world of Mr. + Browning's acquaintance continued to condemn the too great honour which + was being done to him; from those of the inner circle he constantly + received condolences on being made the subject of proceedings which, + according to them, he must somehow regard as an offence. + </p> + <p> + This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. At the + beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions of the + Society. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings as to its + future. He could not be sure that its action would always be judicious, + still less that it would be always successful. He was prepared for its + being laughed at, and for himself being included in the laughter. He + consented to its establishment for what seemed to him the one unanswerable + reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, no just cause for + forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn between the kind of + publicity which every writer seeks, which, for good or evil, he had + already obtained, and that which the Browning Society was conferring on + him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed, and discussed + 'viva voce' and in print. That these proceedings would now take place in + other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, through other organs than + newspapers or magazines, by other and larger groups of persons than those + usually gathered round a dinner-or a tea-table, involved no real change in + the situation. In any case, he had made himself public property; and those + who thus organized their study of him were exercising an individual right. + If his own rights had been assailed he would have guarded them also; but + the circumstances of the case precluded such a contingency. And he had his + reward. How he felt towards the Society at the close of its first session + is better indicated in the following letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald than in + the note to Mr. Yates which Mr. Sharp has published, and which was written + with more reserve and, I believe, at a rather earlier date. Even the shade + of condescension which lingers about his words will have been effaced by + subsequent experience; and many letters written to Dr. Furnivall must, + since then, have attested his grateful and affectionate appreciation of + kindness intended and service done to him. + </p> + <p> + . . . They always treat me gently in 'Punch'—why don't you do the + same by the Browning Society? I see you emphasize Miss Hickey's + acknowledgement of defects in time and want of rehearsal: but I look for + no great perfection in a number of kindly disposed strangers to me + personally, who try to interest people in my poems by singing and reading + them. They give their time for nothing, offer their little entertainment + for nothing, and certainly get next to nothing in the way of thanks—unless + from myself who feel grateful to the faces I shall never see, the voices I + shall never hear. The kindest notices I have had, or at all events those + that have given me most pleasure, have been educed by this Society—A. + Sidgwick's paper, that of Professor Corson, Miss Lewis' article in this + month's 'Macmillan'—and I feel grateful for it all, for my part,—and + none the less for a little amusement at the wonder of some of my friends + that I do not jump up and denounce the practices which must annoy me so + much. Oh! my 'gentle Shakespeare', how well you felt and said—'never + anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.' So, dear Lady, + here is my duty and simplicity tendering itself to you, with all affection + besides, and I being ever yours, R. Browning. + </p> + <p> + That general disposition of the London world which left the ranks of the + little Society to be three-fourths recruited among persons, many living at + a distance, whom the poet did not know, became also in its way a + satisfaction. It was with him a matter of course, though never of + indifference, that his closer friends of both sexes were among its + members; it was one of real gratification that they included from the + beginning such men as Dean Boyle of Salisbury, the Rev. Llewellyn Davies, + George Meredith, and James Cotter Morison—that they enjoyed the + sympathy and co-operation of such a one as Archdeacon Farrar. But he had + an ingenuous pride in reading the large remainder of the Society's lists + of names, and pointing out the fact that there was not one among them + which he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, 'All these people + care for me as a poet. No social interest, no personal prepossession, has + attracted them to my work.' And when the unknown name was not only + appended to a list; when it formed the signature of a paper—excellent + or indifferent as might be—but in either case bearing witness to a + careful and unobtrusive study of his poems, by so much was the + gratification increased. He seldom weighed the intrinsic merit of such + productions; he did not read them critically. No man was ever more adverse + to the seeming ungraciousness of analyzing the quality of a gift. In real + life indeed this power of gratitude sometimes defeated its own end, by + neutralizing his insight into the motive or effort involved in different + acts of kindness, and placing them all successively on the same plane. + </p> + <p> + In the present case, however, an ungraduated acceptance of the labour + bestowed on him was part of the neutral attitude which it was his constant + endeavour to maintain. He always refrained from noticing any erroneous + statement concerning himself or his works which might appear in the Papers + of the Society: since, as he alleged, if he once began to correct, he + would appear to endorse whatever he left uncorrected, and thus make + himself responsible, not only for any interpretation that might be placed + on his poems, but, what was far more serious, for every eulogium that was + bestowed upon them. He could not stand aloof as entirely as he or even his + friends desired, since it was usual with some members of the Society to + seek from him elucidations of obscure passages which, without these, it + was declared, would be a stumbling-block to future readers. But he + disliked being even to this extent drawn into its operation; and his help + was, I believe, less and less frequently invoked. Nothing could be more + false than the rumour which once arose that he superintended those + performances of his plays which took place under the direction of the + Society. Once only, and by the urgent desire of some of the actors, did he + witness a last rehearsal of one of them. + </p> + <p> + It was also a matter of course that men and women brought together by a + pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning's work should often ignore its + authorized explanations, and should read and discuss it in the light of + personal impressions more congenial to their own mind; and the various and + circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem did not serve to + render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry lies so largely + in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions of it have their + positive value and also their relative truth; and the intellectual + friction which was thus created, not only in the parent society, but in + its offshoots in England and America, was not their least important + result. + </p> + <p> + These Societies conferred, it need hardly be said, no less real benefits + on the public at large. They extended the sale of Mr. Browning's works, + and with it their distinct influence for intellectual and moral good. They + not only created in many minds an interest in these works, but aroused the + interest where it was latent, and gave it expression where it had hitherto + found no voice. One fault, alone, could be charged against them; and this + lay partly in the nature of all friendly concerted action: they stirred a + spirit of enthusiasm in which it was not easy, under conditions equally + genuine, to distinguish the individual element from that which was due to + contagion; while the presence among us of the still living poet often + infused into that enthusiasm a vaguely emotional element, which otherwise + detracted from its intellectual worth. But in so far as this was a + drawback to the intended action of the Societies, it was one only in the + most negative sense; nor can we doubt, that, to a certain extent, Mr. + Browning's best influence was promoted by it. The hysterical sensibilities + which, for some years past, he had unconsciously but not unfrequently + aroused in the minds of women, and even of men, were a morbid development + of that influence, which its open and systematic extension tended rather + to diminish than to increase. + </p> + <p> + It is also a matter of history that Robert Browning had many deep and + constant admirers in England, and still more in America,* long before this + organized interest had developed itself. Letters received from often + remote parts of the United States had been for many years a detail of his + daily experience; and even when they consisted of the request for an + autograph, an application to print selections from his works, or a mere + expression of schoolboy pertness or schoolgirl sentimentality, they bore + witness to his wide reputation in that country, and the high esteem in + which he was held there.** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter of Boston + had long, I believe, been conspicuous in the higher ranks of his + disciples, though they first occur in his correspondence at about this + date. I trust I may take for granted Mrs. Thaxter's permission to publish + a letter from her. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * The cheapening of his works in America, induced by the + absence of international copyright, accounts of course in + some degree for their wider diffusion, and hence earlier + appreciation there. + + ** One of the most curious proofs of this was the + Californian Railway time-table edition of his poems. +</pre> + <p> + Newtonville, Massachusetts: March 14, 1880. + </p> + <p> + My dear Mr. Browning: + </p> + <p> + Your note reached me this morning, but it belonged to my husband, for it + was he who wrote to you; so I gave it to him, glad to put into his hands + so precious a piece of manuscript, for he has for you and all your work an + enthusiastic appreciation such as is seldom found on this planet: it is + not possible that the admiration of one mortal for another can exceed his + feeling for you. You might have written for him, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I've a friend over the sea, + . . . . + + It all grew out of the books I write, &c. +</pre> + <p> + You should see his fine wrath and scorn for the idiocy that doesn't at + once comprehend you! + </p> + <p> + He knows every word you have ever written; long ago 'Sordello' was an open + book to him from title-page to closing line, and <i>all</i> you have + printed since has been as eagerly and studiously devoured. He reads you + aloud (and his reading is a fine art) to crowds of astonished people, he + swears by you, he thinks no one save Shakspere has a right to be mentioned + in the same century with you. You are the great enthusiasm of his life. + </p> + <p> + Pardon me, you are smiling, I dare say. You hear any amount of such + things, doubtless. But a genuine living appreciation is always worth + having in this old world, it is like a strong fresh breeze from off the + brine, that puts a sense of life and power into a man. You cannot be the + worse for it. Yours very sincerely, Celia Thaxter. + </p> + <p> + When Mr. Thaxter died, in February 1885, his son wrote to Mr. Browning to + beg of him a few lines to be inscribed on his father's tombstone. The + little poem by which the request was answered has not yet, I believe, been + published. + </p> + <p> + 'Written to be inscribed on the gravestone of Levi Thaxter.' + </p> + <p> + Thou, whom these eyes saw never,—say friends true Who say my soul, + helped onward by my song, Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too? I + gave but of the little that I knew: How were the gift requited, while + along Life's path I pace, could'st thou make weakness strong, Help me with + knowledge—for Life's old, Death's new! R. B. April 19, '85. + </p> + <p> + A publication which connected itself with the labours of the Society, + without being directly inspired by it, was the annotated 'Strafford' + prepared by Miss Hickey for the use of students. It may be agreeable to + those who use the little work to know the estimate in which Mr. Browning + held it. He wrote as follows: + </p> + <p> + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: February 15, 1884. + </p> + <p> + Dear Miss Hickey,—I have returned the Proofs by post,—nothing + can be better than your notes—and with a real wish to be of use, I + read them carefully that I might detect never so tiny a fault,—but I + found none—unless (to show you how minutely I searched,) it should + be one that by 'thriving in your contempt,' I meant simply 'while you + despise them, and for all that, they thrive and are powerful to do you + harm.' The idiom you prefer—quite an authorized one—comes to + much the same thing after all. + </p> + <p> + You must know how much I grieve at your illness—temporary as I will + trust it to be—I feel all your goodness to me—or whatever in + my books may be taken for me—well, I wish you knew how thoroughly I + feel it—and how truly I am and shall ever be Yours affectionately, + Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + From the time of the foundation of the New Shakspere Society, Mr. Browning + was its president. In 1880 he became a member of the Wordsworth Society. + Two interesting letters to Professor Knight, dated respectively 1880 and + 1887, connect themselves with the working of the latter; and, in spite of + their distance in time, may therefore be given together. The poem which + formed the subject of the first was 'The Daisy';* the selection referred + to in the second was that made in 1888 by Professor Knight for the + Wordsworth Society, with the co-operation of Mr. Browning and other + eminent literary men. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * That beginning 'In youth from rock to rock, I went.' +</pre> + <p> + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: July 9, '80. + </p> + <p> + My dear Sir,—You pay me a compliment in caring for my opinion—but, + such as it is, a very decided one it must be. On every account, your + method of giving the original text, and subjoining in a note the + variations, each with its proper date, is incontestably preferable to any + other. It would be so, if the variations were even improvements—there + would be pleasure as well as profit in seeing what was good grow visibly + better. But—to confine ourselves to the single 'proof' you have sent + me—in every case the change is sadly for the worse: I am quite + troubled by such spoilings of passage after passage as I should have + chuckled at had I chanced upon them in some copy pencil-marked with + corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed, they are nearly as wretched as + the touchings-up of the 'Siege of Corinth' by the latter. If ever diabolic + agency was caught at tricks with 'apostolic' achievement (see page 9)—and + 'apostolic', with no 'profanity' at all, I esteem these poems to be—surely + you may bid it 'aroint' 'about and all about' these desecrated stanzas—each + of which, however, thanks to your piety, we may hail, I trust, with a + hearty + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain + Nor be less dear to future men + Than in old time! +</pre> + <p> + Believe me, my dear Sir, Yours very sincerely, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: March 23, '87. + </p> + <p> + Dear Professor Knight,—I have seemed to neglect your commission + shamefully enough: but I confess to a sort of repugnance to classifying + the poems as even good and less good: because in my heart I fear I should + do it almost chronologically—so immeasureably superior seem to me + the 'first sprightly runnings'. Your selection would appear to be + excellent; and the partial admittance of the later work prevents one from + observing the too definitely distinguishing black line between supremely + good and—well, what is fairly tolerable—from Wordsworth, + always understand! I have marked a few of the early poems, not included in + your list—I could do no other when my conscience tells me that I + never can be tired of loving them: while, with the best will in the world, + I could never do more than try hard to like them.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * By 'them' Mr. Browning clearly means the later poems, and + probably has omitted a few words which would have shown + this. +</pre> + <p> + You see, I go wholly upon my individual likings and distastes: that other + considerations should have their weight with other people is natural and + inevitable. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + Many thanks for the volume just received—that with the + correspondence. I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut + away from 'Dion'. + </p> + <p> + In 1884 he was again invited, and again declined, to stand for the Lord + Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews. In the same year he received + the LL.D. degree of the University of Edinburgh; and in the following was + made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of that city.* During + the few days spent there on the occasion of his investiture, he was the + guest of Professor Masson, whose solicitous kindness to him is still + warmly remembered in the family. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * This Association was instituted in 1833, and is a union of + literary and debating societies. It is at present composed + of five: the Dialectic, Scots Law, Diagnostic, + Philosophical, and Philomathic. +</pre> + <p> + The interest in Mr. Browning as a poet is beginning to spread in Germany. + There is room for wonder that it should not have done so before, though + the affinities of his genius are rather with the older than with the more + modern German mind. It is much more remarkable that, many years ago, his + work had already a sympathetic exponent in Italy. Signor Nencioni, + Professor of Literature in Florence, had made his acquaintance at Siena, + and was possibly first attracted to him through his wife, although I never + heard that it was so. He was soon, however, fascinated by Mr. Browning's + poetry, and made it an object of serious study; he largely quoted from, + and wrote on it, in the Roman paper 'Fanfulla della Domenica', in 1881 and + 1882; and published last winter what is, I am told, an excellent article + on the same subject, in the 'Nuova Antologia'. Two years ago he travelled + from Rome to Venice (accompanied by Signor Placci), for the purpose of + seeing him. He is fond of reciting passages from the works, and has even + made attempts at translation: though he understands them too well not to + pronounce them, what they are for every Latin language, untranslatable. + </p> + <p> + In 1883 Mr. Browning added another link to the 'golden' chain of verse + which united England and Italy. A statue of Goldoni was about to be + erected in Venice. The ceremonies of the occasion were to include the + appearance of a volume—or album—of appropriate poems; and + Cavaliere Molmenti, its intending editor, a leading member of the + 'Erection Committee', begged Mr. Browning to contribute to it. It was also + desired that he should be present at the unveiling.* He was unable to + grant this request, but consented to write a poem. This sonnet to Goldoni + also deserves to be more widely known, both for itself and for the manner + of its production. Mr. Browning had forgotten, or not understood, how soon + the promise concerning it must be fulfilled, and it was actually scribbled + off while a messenger, sent by Signor Molmenti, waited for it. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * It was, I think, during this visit to Venice that he + assisted at a no less interesting ceremony: the unveiling + of a commemorative tablet to Baldassaro Galuppi, in his + native island of Burano. +</pre> + <p> + Goldoni,—good, gay, sunniest of souls,—Glassing half Venice in + that verse of thine,—What though it just reflect the shade and shine + Of common life, nor render, as it rolls Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for + thy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to that + opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. There throng the + people: how they come and go Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright + garb,—see,—On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge! + Dear king of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so, Venice, + and we who love her, all love thee! + </p> + <p> + Venice, Nov. 27, 1883. + </p> + <p> + A complete bibliography would take account of three other sonnets, 'The + Founder of the Feast', 1884, 'The Names', 1884, and 'Why I am a Liberal', + 1886, to which I shall have occasion to refer; but we decline insensibly + from these on to the less important or more fugitive productions which + such lists also include, and on which it is unnecessary or undesirable + that any stress should be laid. + </p> + <p> + In 1885 he was joined in Venice by his son. It was 'Penini's' first return + to the country of his birth, his first experience of the city which he had + only visited in his nurse's arms; and his delight in it was so great that + the plan shaped itself in his father's mind of buying a house there, which + should serve as 'pied-a-terre' for the family, but more especially as a + home for him. Neither the health nor the energies of the younger Mr. + Browning had ever withstood the influence of the London climate; a foreign + element was undoubtedly present in his otherwise thoroughly English + constitution. Everything now pointed to his settling in Italy, and + pursuing his artist life there, only interrupting it by occasional visits + to London and Paris. His father entered into negotiations for the Palazzo + Manzoni, next door to the former Hotel de l'Univers; and the purchase was + completed, so far as he was concerned, before he returned to England. The + fact is related, and his own position towards it described in a letter to + Mrs. Charles Skirrow, written from Venice. + </p> + <p> + Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, S. Moise: Nov. 15, '85. + </p> + <p> + My two dear friends will have supposed, with plenty of reason, that I + never got the kind letter some weeks ago. When it came, I was in the + middle of an affair, conducted by letters of quite another kind, with + people abroad: and as I fancied that every next day might bring me news + very interesting to me and likely to be worth telling to the dear friends, + I waited and waited—and only two days since did the matter come to a + satisfactory conclusion—so, as the Irish song has it, 'Open your + eyes and die with surprise' when I inform you that I have purchased the + Manzoni Palace here, on the Canal Grande, of its owner, Marchese + Montecucculi, an Austrian and an absentee—hence the delay of + communication. I did this purely for Pen—who became at once simply + infatuated with the city which won my whole heart long before he was born + or thought of. I secure him a perfect domicile, every facility for his + painting and sculpture, and a property fairly worth, even here and now, + double what I gave for it—such is the virtue in these parts of ready + money! I myself shall stick to London—which has been so eminently + good and gracious to me—so long as God permits; only, when the + inevitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body—(I shall not + believe in his reaching my soul and proper self)—there will be a + capital retreat provided: and meantime I shall be able to 'take mine ease + in mine own inn' whenever so minded. There, my dear friends! I trust now + to be able to leave very shortly; the main business cannot be formally + concluded before two months at least—through the absence of the + Marchese,—who left at once to return to his duties as commander of + an Austrian ship; but the necessary engagement to sell and buy at a + specified price is made in due legal form, and the papers will be sent to + me in London for signature. I hope to get away the week after next at + latest,—spite of the weather in England which to-day's letters + report as 'atrocious',—and ours, though variable, is in the main + very tolerable and sometimes perfect; for all that, I yearn to be at home + in poor Warwick Crescent, which must do its best to make me forget my new + abode. I forget you don't know Venice. Well then, the Palazzo Manzoni is + situate on the Grand Canal, and is described by Ruskin,—to give no + other authority,—as 'a perfect and very rich example of Byzantine + Renaissance: its warm yellow marbles are magnificent.' And again—'an + exquisite example (of Byzantine Renaissance) as applied to domestic + architecture.' So testify the 'Stones of Venice'. But we will talk about + the place, over a photograph, when I am happy enough to be with you again. + </p> + <p> + Of Venetian gossip there is next to none. We had an admirable Venetian + Company,—using the dialect,—at the Goldoni Theatre. The acting + of Zago, in his various parts, and Zenon-Palladini, in her especial + character of a Venetian piece of volubility and impulsiveness in the shape + of a servant, were admirable indeed. The manager, Gallina, is a playwright + of much reputation, and gave us some dozen of his own pieces, mostly good + and clever. S. is very well,—much improved in health: we walk + sufficiently in this city where walking is accounted impossible by those + who never attempt it. Have I tired your good temper? No! you ever wished + me well, and I love you both with my whole heart. S.'s love goes with mine—who + am ever yours Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + He never, however, owned the Manzoni Palace. The Austrian gentlemen* whose + property it was, put forward, at the last moment, unexpected and to his + mind unreasonable claims; and he was preparing to contest the position, + when a timely warning induced him to withdraw from it altogether. The + warning proceeded from his son, who had remained on the spot, and was now + informed on competent authority that the foundations of the house were + insecure. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Two or three brothers. +</pre> + <p> + In the early summer of 1884, and again in 1886, Miss Browning had a + serious illness; and though she recovered, in each case completely, and in + the first rapidly, it was considered desirable that she should not travel + so far as usual from home. She and her brother therefore accepted for the + August and September of 1884 the urgent invitation of an American friend, + Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, to stay with her at a villa which she rented for + some seasons at St. Moritz. Mr. Browning was delighted with the Engadine, + where the circumstances of his abode, and the thoughtful kindness of his + hostess, allowed him to enjoy the benefits of comparative civilization + together with almost perfect repose. The weather that year was brilliant + until the end of September, if not beyond it; and his letters tell the old + pleasant story of long daily walks and a general sense of invigoration. + One of these, written to Mr. and Mrs. Skirrow, also contains some pungent + remarks on contemporary events, with an affectionate allusion to one of + the chief actors in them. + </p> + <p> + 'Anyhow, I have the sincerest hope that Wolseley may get done as soon, and + kill as few people, as possible,—keeping himself safe and sound—brave + dear fellow—for the benefit of us all.' + </p> + <p> + He also speaks with great sympathy of the death of Mr. Charles Sartoris, + which had just taken place at St.-Moritz. + </p> + <p> + In 1886, Miss Browning was not allowed to leave England; and she and Mr. + Browning established themselves for the autumn at the Hand Hotel at + Llangollen, where their old friends, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, would + be within easy reach. Mr. Browning missed the exhilarating effects of the + Alpine air; but he enjoyed the peaceful beauty of the Welsh valley, and + the quiet and comfort of the old-fashioned English inn. A new source of + interest also presented itself to him in some aspects of the life of the + English country gentleman. He was struck by the improvements effected by + its actual owner* on a neighbouring estate, and by the provisions + contained in them for the comfort of both the men and the animals under + his care; and he afterwards made, in reference to them, what was for a + professing Liberal, a very striking remark: 'Talk of abolishing that class + of men! They are the salt of the earth!' Every Sunday afternoon he and his + sister drank tea—weather permitting—on the lawn with their + friends at Brintysilio; and he alludes gracefully to these meetings in a + letter written in the early summer of 1888, when Lady Martin had urged him + to return to Wales. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * I believe a Captain Best. +</pre> + <p> + The poet left another and more pathetic remembrance of himself in the + neighbourhood of Llangollen: his weekly presence at the afternoon Sunday + service in the parish church of Llantysilio. Churchgoing was, as I have + said, no part of his regular life. It was no part of his life in London. + But I do not think he ever failed in it at the Universities or in the + country. The assembling for prayer meant for him something deeper in both + the religious and the human sense, where ancient learning and piety + breathed through the consecrated edifice, or where only the figurative + 'two or three' were 'gathered together' within it. A memorial tablet now + marks the spot at which on this occasion the sweet grave face and the + venerable head were so often seen. It has been placed by the direction of + Lady Martin on the adjoining wall. + </p> + <p> + It was in the September of this year that Mr. Browning heard of the death + of M. Joseph Milsand. This name represented for him one of the few close + friendships which were to remain until the end, unclouded in fact and in + remembrance; and although some weight may be given to those circumstances + of their lives which precluded all possibility of friction and risk of + disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, and Mr. Browning's + unfailing powers of appreciation would, in all possible cases, have + maintained the bond intact. The event was at the last sudden, but happily + not quite unexpected. + </p> + <p> + Many other friends had passed by this time out of the poet's life—those + of a younger, as well as his own and an older generation. Miss Haworth + died in 1883. Charles Dickens, with whom he had remained on the most + cordial terms, had walked between him and his son at Thackeray's funeral, + to receive from him, only seven years later, the same pious office. Lady + Augusta Stanley, the daughter of his old friend, Lady Elgin, was dead, and + her husband, the Dean of Westminster. So also were 'Barry Cornwall' and + John Forster, Alfred Domett, and Thomas Carlyle, Mr. Cholmondeley and Lord + Houghton; others still, both men and women, whose love for him might + entitle them to a place in his Biography, but whom I could at most only + mention by name. + </p> + <p> + For none of these can his feeling have been more constant or more + disinterested than that which bound him to Carlyle. He visited him at + Chelsea in the last weary days of his long life, as often as their + distance from each other and his own engagements allowed. Even the man's + posthumous self-disclosures scarcely availed to destroy the affectionate + reverence which he had always felt for him. He never ceased to defend him + against the charge of unkindness to his wife, or to believe that in the + matter of their domestic unhappiness she was the more responsible of the + two.* Yet Carlyle had never rendered him that service, easy as it appears, + which one man of letters most justly values from another: that of + proclaiming the admiration which he privately expresses for his works. The + fact was incomprehensible to Mr. Browning—it was so foreign to his + own nature; and he commented on it with a touch, though merely a touch, of + bitterness, when repeating to a friend some almost extravagant eulogium + which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. 'If only,' he + said, 'those words had been ever repeated in public, what good they might + have done me!' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I + believe little liking was lost between them. He told a + comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather + stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing + by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire. He + took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the + conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the + hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see + that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never + ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing + it. +</pre> + <p> + In the spring of 1886, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent to + the Royal Academy, rendered vacant by the death of Lord Houghton. He had + long been on very friendly terms with the leading Academicians, and a + constant guest at the Banquet; and his fitness for the office admitted of + no doubt. But his nomination by the President, and the manner in which it + was ratified by the Council and general body, gave him sincere pleasure. + </p> + <p> + Early in 1887, the 'Parleyings' appeared. Their author is still the same + Robert Browning, though here and there visibly touched by the hand of + time. Passages of sweet or majestic music, or of exquisite fancy, + alternate with its long stretches of argumentative thought; and the light + of imagination still plays, however fitfully, over statements of opinion + to which constant repetition has given a suggestion of commonplace. But + the revision of the work caused him unusual trouble. The subjects he had + chosen strained his powers of exposition; and I think he often tried to + remedy by mere verbal correction, what was a defect in the logical + arrangement of his ideas. They would slide into each other where a visible + dividing line was required. The last stage of his life was now at hand; + and the vivid return of fancy to his boyhood's literary loves was in + pathetic, perhaps not quite accidental, coincidence with the fact. It will + be well to pause at this beginning of his decline, and recall so far as + possible the image of the man who lived, and worked, and loved, and was + loved among us, during that brief old age, and the lengthened period of + level strength which had preceded it. The record already given of his life + and work supplies the outline of the picture; but a few more personal + details are required for its completion. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 20 + </h2> + <p> + Constancy to Habit—Optimism—Belief in Providence—Political + Opinions—His Friendships—Reverence for Genius—Attitude + towards his Public—Attitude towards his Work—Habits of Work—His + Reading—Conversational Powers—Impulsiveness and Reserve—Nervous + Peculiarities—His Benevolence—His Attitude towards Women. + </p> + <p> + When Mr. Browning wrote to Miss Haworth, in the July of 1861, he had said: + 'I shall still grow, I hope; but my root is taken, and remains.' He was + then alluding to a special offshoot of feeling and association, on the + permanence of which it is not now necessary to dwell; but it is certain + that he continued growing up to a late age, and that the development was + only limited by those general roots, those fixed conditions of his being, + which had predetermined its form. This progressive intellectual vitality + is amply represented in his works; it also reveals itself in his letters + in so far as I have been allowed to publish them. I only refer to it to + give emphasis to a contrasted or corresponding characteristic: his + aversion to every thought of change. I have spoken of his constancy to all + degrees of friendship and love. What he loved once he loved always, from + the dearest man or woman to whom his allegiance had been given, to the + humblest piece of furniture which had served him. It was equally true that + what he had done once he was wont, for that very reason, to continue + doing. The devotion to habits of feeling extended to habits of life; and + although the lower constancy generally served the purposes of the higher, + it also sometimes clashed with them. It conspired with his ready kindness + of heart to make him subject to circumstances which at first appealed to + him through that kindness, but lay really beyond its scope. This + statement, it is true, can only fully apply to the latter part of his + life. His powers of reaction must originally have been stronger, as well + as freer from the paralysis of conflicting motive and interest. The marked + shrinking from effort in any untried direction, which was often another + name for his stability, could scarcely have coexisted with the fresher and + more curious interest in men and things; we know indeed from recorded + facts that it was a feeling of later growth; and it visibly increased with + the periodical nervous exhaustion of his advancing years. I am convinced, + nevertheless, that, when the restiveness of boyhood had passed away, Mr. + Browning's strength was always more passive than active; that he + habitually made the best of external conditions rather than tried to + change them. He was a 'fighter' only by the brain. And on this point, + though on this only, his work is misleading. + </p> + <p> + The acquiescent tendency arose in some degree from two equally prominent + characteristics of Mr. Browning's nature: his optimism, and his belief in + direct Providence; and these again represented a condition of mind which + was in certain respects a quality, but must in others be recognized as a + defect. It disposed him too much to make a virtue of happiness. It tended + also to the ignoring or denying of many incidental possibilities, and many + standing problems of human suffering. The first part of this assertion is + illustrated by 'The Two Poets of Croisic', in which Mr. Browning declares + that, other conditions being equal, the greater poet will have been he who + led the happier life, who most completely—and we must take this in + the human as well as religious sense—triumphed over suffering. The + second has its proof in the contempt for poetic melancholy which flashes + from the supposed utterance of Shakespeare in 'At the Mermaid'; its + negative justification in the whole range of his work. + </p> + <p> + Such facts may be hard to reconcile with others already known of Mr. + Browning's nature, or already stated concerning it; but it is in the + depths of that nature that the solution of this, as of more than one other + anomaly, must be sought. It is true that remembered pain dwelt longer with + him than remembered pleasure. It is true that the last great sorrow of his + life was long felt and cherished by him as a religion, and that it entered + as such into the courage with which he first confronted it. It is no less + true that he directly and increasingly cultivated happiness; and that + because of certain sufferings which had been connected with them, he would + often have refused to live his happiest days again. + </p> + <p> + It seems still harder to associate defective human sympathy with his kind + heart and large dramatic imagination, though that very imagination was an + important factor in the case. It forbade the collective and mathematical + estimate of human suffering, which is so much in favour with modern + philanthropy, and so untrue a measure for the individual life; and he + indirectly condemns it in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' in the parable of 'Bean + Stripes'. But his dominant individuality also barred the recognition of + any judgment or impression, any thought or feeling, which did not justify + itself from his own point of view. The barrier would melt under the + influence of a sympathetic mood, as it would stiffen in the atmosphere of + disagreement. It would yield, as did in his case so many other things, to + continued indirect pressure, whether from his love of justice, the + strength of his attachments, or his power of imaginative absorption. But + he was bound by the conditions of an essentially creative nature. The + subjectiveness, if I may for once use that hackneyed word, had passed out + of his work only to root itself more strongly in his life. He was + self-centred, as the creative nature must inevitably be. He appeared, for + this reason, more widely sympathetic in his works than in his life, though + even in the former certain grounds of vicarious feeling remained + untouched. The sympathy there displayed was creative and obeyed its own + law. That which was demanded from him by reality was responsive, and + implied submission to the law of other minds. + </p> + <p> + Such intellectual egotism is unconnected with moral selfishness, though it + often unconsciously does its work. Were it otherwise, I should have passed + over in silence this aspect, comprehensive though it is, of Mr. Browning's + character. He was capable of the largest self-sacrifice and of the + smallest self-denial; and would exercise either whenever love or duty + clearly pointed the way. He would, he believed, cheerfully have done so at + the command, however arbitrary, of a Higher Power; he often spoke of the + absence of such injunction, whether to endurance or action, as the great + theoretical difficulty of life for those who, like himself, rejected or + questioned the dogmatic teachings of Christianity. This does not mean that + he ignored the traditional moralities which have so largely taken their + place. They coincided in great measure with his own instincts; and few + occasions could have arisen in which they would not be to him a sufficient + guide. I may add, though this is a digression, that he never admitted the + right of genius to defy them; when such a right had once been claimed for + it in his presence, he rejoined quickly, 'That is an error! <i>noblesse + oblige</i>.' But he had difficulty in acknowledging any abstract law which + did not derive from a Higher Power; and this fact may have been at once + cause and consequence of the special conditions of his own mind. All human + or conventional obligation appeals finally to the individual judgment; and + in his case this could easily be obscured by the always militant + imagination, in regard to any subject in which his feelings were even + indirectly concerned. No one saw more justly than he, when the object of + vision was general or remote. Whatever entered his personal atmosphere + encountered a refracting medium in which objects were decomposed, and a + succession of details, each held as it were close to the eye, blocked out + the larger view. + </p> + <p> + We have seen, on the other hand, that he accepted imperfect knowledge as + part of the discipline of experience. It detracted in no sense from his + conviction of direct relations with the Creator. This was indeed the + central fact of his theology, as the absolute individual existence had + been the central fact of his metaphysics; and when he described the fatal + leap in 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' as a frantic appeal to the Higher + Powers for the 'sign' which the man's religion did not afford, and his + nature could not supply, a special dramatic sympathy was at work within + him. The third part of the epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae' represented his + own creed; though this was often accentuated in the sense of a more + personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery, than the poem + conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjective idealist philosopher + were curiously blended in his composition. + </p> + <p> + The transition seems violent from this old-world religion to any system of + politics applicable to the present day. They were, nevertheless, closely + allied in Mr. Browning's mind. His politics were, so far as they went, the + practical aspect of his religion. Their cardinal doctrine was the liberty + of individual growth; removal of every barrier of prejudice or convention + by which it might still be checked. He had been a Radical in youth, and + probably in early manhood; he remained, in the truest sense of the word, a + Liberal; and his position as such was defined in the sonnet prefixed in + 1886 to Mr. Andrew Reid's essay, 'Why I am a Liberal', and bearing the + same name. Its profession of faith did not, however, necessarily bind him + to any political party. It separated him from all the newest developments + of so-called Liberalism. He respected the rights of property. He was a + true patriot, hating to see his country plunged into aggressive wars, but + tenacious of her position among the empires of the world. He was also a + passionate Unionist; although the question of our political relations with + Ireland weighed less with him, as it has done with so many others, than + those considerations of law and order, of honesty and humanity, which have + been trampled under foot in the name of Home Rule. It grieved and + surprised him to find himself on this subject at issue with so many valued + friends; and no pain of Lost Leadership was ever more angry or more + intense, than that which came to him through the defection of a great + statesman whom he had honoured and loved, from what he believed to be the + right cause. + </p> + <p> + The character of Mr. Browning's friendships reveals itself in great + measure in even a simple outline of his life. His first friends of his own + sex were almost exclusively men of letters, by taste if not by profession; + the circumstances of his entrance into society made this a matter of + course. In later years he associated on cordial terms with men of very + various interests and professions; and only writers of conspicuous merit, + whether in prose or poetry, attracted him as such. No intercourse was more + congenial to him than that of the higher class of English clergymen. He + sympathized in their beliefs even when he did not share them. Above all he + loved their culture; and the love of culture in general, of its old + classic forms in particular, was as strong in him as if it had been formed + by all the natural and conventional associations of a university career. + He had hearty friends and appreciators among the dignitaries of the Church—successive + Archbishops and Bishops, Deans of Westminster and St. Paul's. They all + knew the value of the great freelance who fought like the gods of old with + the regular army. No name, however, has been mentioned in the poet's + family more frequently or with more affection than that of the Rev. J. D. + W. Williams, Vicar of Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. The mutual + acquaintance, which was made through Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. + George Moulton-Barrett, was prepared by Mr. Williams' great love for his + poems, of which he translated many into Latin and Greek; but I am + convinced that Mr. Browning's delight in his friend's classical + attainments was quite as great as his gratification in the tribute he + himself derived from them. + </p> + <p> + His love of genius was a worship: and in this we must include his whole + life. Nor was it, as this feeling so often is, exclusively exercised upon + the past. I do not suppose his more eminent contemporaries ever quite knew + how generous his enthusiasm for them had been, how free from any + under-current of envy, or impulse to avoidable criticism. He could not + endure even just censure of one whom he believed, or had believed to be + great. I have seen him wince under it, though no third person was present, + and heard him answer, 'Don't! don't!' as if physical pain were being + inflicted on him. In the early days he would make his friend, M. de + Monclar, draw for him from memory the likenesses of famous writers whom he + had known in Paris; the sketches thus made of George Sand and Victor Hugo + are still in the poet's family. A still more striking and very touching + incident refers to one of the winters, probably the second, which he spent + in Paris. He was one day walking with little Pen, when Beranger came in + sight, and he bade the child 'run up to' or 'run past that gentleman, and + put his hand for a moment upon him.' This was a great man, he afterwards + explained, and he wished his son to be able by-and-by to say that if he + had not known, he had at all events touched him. Scientific genius ranked + with him only second to the poetical. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's delicate professional sympathies justified some + sensitiveness on his own account; but he was, I am convinced, as free from + this quality as a man with a poet-nature could possibly be. It may seem + hazardous to conjecture how serious criticism would have affected him. Few + men so much 'reviewed' have experienced so little. He was by turns derided + or ignored, enthusiastically praised, zealously analyzed and interpreted: + but the independent judgment which could embrace at once the quality of + his mind and its defects, is almost absent—has been so at all events + during later years—from the volumes which have been written about + him. I am convinced, nevertheless, that he would have accepted serious, + even adverse criticism, if it had borne the impress of unbiassed thought + and genuine sincerity. It could not be otherwise with one in whom the + power of reverence was so strongly marked. + </p> + <p> + He asked but one thing of his reviewers, as he asked but one thing of his + larger public. The first demand is indicated in a letter to Mrs. Frank + Hill, of January 31, 1884. + </p> + <p> + Dear Mrs. Hill,—Could you befriend me? The 'Century' prints a little + insignificance of mine—an impromptu sonnet—but prints it <i>correctly</i>. + The 'Pall Mall' pleases to extract it—and produces what I enclose: + one line left out, and a note of admiration (!) turned into an I, and a + superfluous 'the' stuck in—all these blunders with the correctly + printed text before it! So does the charge of unintelligibility attach + itself to your poor friend—who can kick nobody. Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + The carelessness often shown in the most friendly quotation could hardly + be absent from that which was intended to support a hostile view; and the + only injustice of which he ever complained, was what he spoke of as + falsely condemning him out of his own mouth. He used to say: 'If a critic + declares that any poem of mine is unintelligible, the reader may go to it + and judge for himself; but, if it is made to appear unintelligible by a + passage extracted from it and distorted by misprints, I have no redress.' + He also failed to realize those conditions of thought, and still more of + expression, which made him often on first reading difficult to understand; + and as the younger generation of his admirers often deny those + difficulties where they exist, as emphatically as their grandfathers + proclaimed them where they did not, public opinion gave him little help in + the matter. + </p> + <p> + The second (unspoken) request was in some sense an antithesis to the + first. Mr. Browning desired to be read accurately but not literally. He + deprecated the constant habit of reading him into his work; whether in + search of the personal meaning of a given passage or poem, or in the light + of a foregone conclusion as to what that meaning must be. The latter + process was that generally preferred, because the individual mind + naturally seeks its own reflection in the poet's work, as it does in the + facts of nature. It was stimulated by the investigations of the Browning + Societies, and by the partial familiarity with his actual life which + constantly supplied tempting, if untrustworthy clues. It grew out of the + strong personal as well as literary interest which he inspired. But the + tendency to listen in his work for a single recurrent note always struck + him as analogous to the inspection of a picture gallery with eyes blind to + every colour but one; and the act of sympathy often involved in this mode + of judgment was neutralized for him by the limitation of his genius which + it presupposed. His general objection to being identified with his works + is set forth in 'At the Mermaid', and other poems of the same volume, in + which it takes the form of a rather captious protest against inferring + from the poet any habit or quality of the man; and where also, under the + impulse of the dramatic mood, he enforces the lesson by saying more than + he can possibly mean. His readers might object that his human personality + was so often plainly revealed in his poetic utterance (whether or not that + of Shakespeare was), and so often also avowed by it, that the line which + divided them became impossible to draw. But he again would have rejoined + that the Poet could never express himself with any large freedom, unless a + fiction of impersonality were granted to him. He might also have alleged, + he often did allege, that in his case the fiction would hold a great deal + of truth; since, except in the rarest cases, the very fact of poetic, + above all of dramatic reproduction, detracts from the reality of the + thought or feeling reproduced. It introduces the alloy of fancy without + which the fixed outlines of even living experience cannot be welded into + poetic form. He claimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should + allow for the action in it of the constructive imagination, in the + exercise of which all deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, + which showed itself in seeking historical authority for every character or + incident which he employed by way of illustration, was especially + irritating to him. + </p> + <p> + I may (as indeed I must) concede this much, without impugning either the + pleasure or the gratitude with which he recognized the increasing interest + in his poems, and, if sometimes exhibited in a mistaken form, the growing + appreciation of them. + </p> + <p> + There was another and more striking peculiarity in Mr. Browning's attitude + towards his works: his constant conviction that the latest must be the + best, because the outcome of the fullest mental experience, and of the + longest practice in his art. He was keenly alive to the necessary failings + of youthful literary production; he also practically denied to it that + quality which so often places it at an advantage over that, not indeed of + more mature manhood, but at all events of advancing age. There was much in + his own experience to blind him to the natural effects of time; it had + been a prolonged triumph over them. But the delusion, in so far as it was + one, lay deeper than the testimony of such experience, and would I think + have survived it. It was the essence of his belief that the mind is + superior to physical change; that it may be helped or hindered by its + temporary alliance with the body, but will none the less outstrip it in + their joint course; and as intellect was for him the life of poetry, so + was the power of poetry independent of bodily progress and bodily decline. + This conviction pervaded his life. He learned, though happily very late, + to feel age an impediment; he never accepted it as a disqualification. + </p> + <p> + He finished his work very carefully. He had the better right to resent any + garbling of it, that this habitually took place through his punctuation, + which was always made with the fullest sense of its significance to any + but the baldest style, and of its special importance to his own. I have + heard him say: 'People accuse me of not taking pains! I take nothing <i>but</i> + pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrast between the irresponsible, + often strangely unquestioned, impulse to which the substance of each poem + was due, and the conscientious labour which he always devoted to its form. + The laborious habit must have grown upon him; it was natural that it + should do so as thought gained the ascendency over emotion in what he had + to say. Mrs. Browning told Mr. Val Prinsep that her husband 'worked at a + great rate;' and this fact probably connected itself with the difficulty + he then found in altering the form or wording of any particular phrase; he + wrote most frequently under that lyrical inspiration in which the idea and + the form are least separable from each other. We know, however, that in + the later editions of his old work he always corrected where he could; and + if we notice the changed lines in 'Paracelsus' or 'Sordello', as they + appear in the edition of 1863, or the slighter alterations indicated for + the last reprint of his works, we are struck by the care evinced in them + for greater smoothness of expression, as well as for greater accuracy and + force. + </p> + <p> + He produced less rapidly in later life, though he could throw off + impromptu verses, whether serious or comical, with the utmost ease. His + work was then of a kind which required more deliberation; and other claims + had multiplied upon his time and thoughts. He was glad to have + accomplished twenty or thirty lines in a morning. After lunch-time, for + many years, he avoided, when possible, even answering a note. But he + always counted a day lost on which he had not written something; and in + those last years on which we have yet to enter, he complained bitterly of + the quantity of ephemeral correspondence which kept him back from his + proper work. He once wrote, on the occasion of a short illness which + confined him to the house, 'All my power of imagination seems gone. I + might as well be in bed!' He repeatedly determined to write a poem every + day, and once succeeded for a fortnight in doing so. He was then in Paris, + preparing 'Men and Women'. 'Childe Roland' and 'Women and Roses' were + among those produced on this plan; the latter having been suggested by + some flowers sent to his wife. The lyrics in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' were + written, I believe, on consecutive days; and the intention renewed itself + with his last work, though it cannot have been maintained. + </p> + <p> + He was not as great a reader in later as in earlier years; he had neither + time nor available strength to be so if he had wished; and he absorbed + almost unconsciously every item which added itself to the sum of general + knowledge. Books had indeed served for him their most important purpose + when they had satisfied the first curiosities of his genius, and enabled + it to establish its independence. His mind was made up on the chief + subjects of contemporary thought, and what was novel or controversial in + its proceeding had no attraction for him. He would read anything, short of + an English novel, to a friend whose eyes required this assistance; but + such pleasure as he derived from the act was more often sympathetic than + spontaneous, even when he had not, as he often had, selected for it a book + which he already knew. In the course of his last decade he devoted himself + for a short time to the study of Spanish and Hebrew. The Spanish + dramatists yielded him a fund of new enjoyment; and he delighted in his + power of reading Hebrew in its most difficult printed forms. He also + tried, but with less result, to improve his knowledge of German. His + eyesight defied all obstacles of bad paper and ancient type, and there was + anxiety as well as pleasure to those about him in his unfailing confidence + in its powers. He never wore spectacles, nor had the least consciousness + of requiring them. He would read an old closely printed volume by the + waning light of a winter afternoon, positively refusing to use a lamp. + Indeed his preference of the faintest natural light to the best that could + be artificially produced was perhaps the one suggestion of coming change. + He used for all purposes a single eye; for the two did not combine in + their action, the right serving exclusively for near, the left for distant + objects. This was why in walking he often closed the right eye; while it + was indispensable to his comfort in reading, not only that the light + should come from the right side, but that the left should be shielded from + any luminous object, like the fire, which even at the distance of half the + length of a room would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near + sight. + </p> + <p> + His literary interest became increasingly centred on records of the lives + of men and women; especially of such men and women as he had known; he was + generally curious to see the newly published biographies, though often + disappointed by them. He would also read, even for his amusement, good + works of French or Italian fiction. His allegiance to Balzac remained + unshaken, though he was conscious of lengthiness when he read him aloud. + This author's deep and hence often poetic realism was, I believe, bound up + with his own earliest aspirations towards dramatic art. His manner of + reading aloud a story which he already knew was the counterpart of his own + method of construction. He would claim his listener's attention for any + apparently unimportant fact which had a part to play in it: he would say: + 'Listen to this description: it will be important. Observe this character: + you will see a great deal more of him or her.' We know that in his own + work nothing was thrown away; no note was struck which did not add its + vibration to the general utterance of the poem; and his habitual + generosity towards a fellow-worker prompted him to seek and recognize the + same quality, even in productions where it was less conspicuous than in + his own. The patient reading which he required for himself was justified + by that which he always demanded for others; and he claimed it less in his + own case for his possible intricacies of thought or style, than for that + compactness of living structure in which every detail or group of details + was essential to the whole, and in a certain sense contained it. He read + few things with so much pleasure as an occasional chapter in the Old + Testament. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning was a brilliant talker; he was admittedly more a talker than + a conversationalist. But this quality had nothing in common with + self-assertion or love of display. He had too much respect for the + acquirements of other men to wish to impose silence on those who were + competent to speak; and he had great pleasure in listening to a discussion + on any subject in which he was interested, and on which he was not + specially informed. He never willingly monopolized the conversation; but + when called upon to take a prominent part in it, either with one person or + with several, the flow of remembered knowledge and revived mental + experience, combined with the ingenuous eagerness to vindicate some point + in dispute would often carry him away; while his hearers, nearly as often, + allowed him to proceed from absence of any desire to interrupt him. This + great mental fertility had been prepared by the wide reading and thorough + assimilation of his early days; and it was only at a later, and in certain + respects less vigorous period, that its full bearing could be seen. His + memory for passing occurrences, even such as had impressed him, became + very weak; it was so before he had grown really old; and he would urge + this fact in deprecation of any want of kindness or sympathy, which a + given act of forgetfulness might seem to involve. He had probably always, + in matters touching his own life, the memory of feelings more than that of + facts. I think this has been described as a peculiarity of the + poet-nature; and though this memory is probably the more tenacious of the + two, it is no safe guide to the recovery of facts, still less to that of + their order and significance. Yet up to the last weeks, even the last + conscious days of his life, his remembrance of historical incident, his + aptness of literary illustration, never failed him. His dinner-table + anecdotes supplied, of course, no measure for this spontaneous + reproductive power; yet some weight must be given to the number of years + during which he could abound in such stories, and attest their constant + appropriateness by not repeating them. + </p> + <p> + This brilliant mental quality had its drawback, on which I have already + touched in a rather different connection: the obstacle which it created to + even serious and private conversation on any subject on which he was not + neutral. Feeling, imagination, and the vividness of personal points of + view, constantly thwarted the attempt at a dispassionate exchange of + ideas. But the balance often righted itself when the excitement of the + discussion was at an end; and it would even become apparent that + expressions or arguments which he had passed over unheeded, or as it + seemed unheard, had stored themselves in his mind and borne fruit there. + </p> + <p> + I think it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined + impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually reticent + where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness and the + reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. + The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their + sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified + each other. But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally its + conscious motives, some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from this + point of view it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more expansive + quality. He never, however, intentionally withheld from others such things + as it concerned them to know. His intellectual and religious convictions + were open to all who seriously sought them; and if, even on such points, + he did not appear communicative, it was because he took more interest in + any subject of conversation which did not directly centre in himself. + </p> + <p> + Setting aside the delicacies which tend to self-concealment, and for which + he had been always more or less conspicuous; excepting also the pride + which would co-operate with them, all his inclinations were in the + direction of truth; there was no quality which he so much loved and + admired. He thought aloud wherever he could trust himself to do so. + Impulse predominated in all the active manifestations of his nature. The + fiery child and the impatient boy had left their traces in the man; and + with them the peculiar childlike quality which the man of genius never + outgrows, and which, in its mingled waywardness and sweetness, was present + in Robert Browning till almost his dying day. There was also a recurrent + touch of hardness, distinct from the comparatively ungenial mood of his + earlier years of widowhood; and this, like his reserve, seemed to conflict + with his general character, but in reality harmonized with it. It meant, + not that feeling was suspended in him, but that it was compressed. It was + his natural response to any opposition which his reasonings could not + shake nor his will overcome, and which, rightly or not, conveyed to him + the sense of being misunderstood. It reacted in pain for others, but it + lay with an aching weight on his own heart, and was thrown off in an + upheaval of the pent-up kindliness and affection, the moment their true + springs were touched. The hardening power in his composition, though + fugitive and comparatively seldom displayed, was in fact proportioned to + his tenderness; and no one who had not seen him in the revulsion from a + hard mood, or the regret for it, knew what that tenderness could be. + </p> + <p> + Underlying all the peculiarities of his nature, its strength and its + weakness, its exuberance and its reserves, was the nervous excitability of + which I have spoken in an earlier chapter. I have heard him say: 'I am + nervous to such a degree that I might fancy I could not enter a + drawing-room, if I did not know from long experience that I can do it.' He + did not desire to conceal this fact, nor need others conceal it for him; + since it was only calculated to disarm criticism and to strengthen + sympathy. The special vital power which he derived from this organization + need not be reaffirmed. It carried also its inevitable disablements. Its + resources were not always under his own control; and he frequently + complained of the lack of presence of mind which would seize him on any + conventional emergency not included in the daily social routine. In a real + one he was never at fault. He never failed in a sympathetic response or a + playful retort; he was always provided with the exact counter requisite in + a game of words. In this respect indeed he had all the powers of the + conversationalist; and the perfect ease and grace and geniality of his + manner on such occasions, arose probably far more from his innate human + and social qualities than from even his familiar intercourse with the + world. But he could not extemporize a speech. He could not on the spur of + the moment string together the more or less set phrases which an + after-dinner oration demands. All his friends knew this, and spared him + the necessity of refusing. He had once a headache all day, because at a + dinner, the night before, a false report had reached him that he was going + to be asked to speak. This alone would have sufficed to prevent him from + accepting any public post. He confesses the disability in a pretty note to + Professor Knight, written in reference to a recent meeting of the + Wordsworth Society. + </p> + <p> + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: May 9, '84. + </p> + <p> + My dear Professor Knight,—I seem ungracious and ungrateful, but am + neither; though, now that your festival is over, I wish I could have + overcome my scruples and apprehensions. It is hard to say—when kind + people press one to 'just speak for a minute'—that the business, so + easy to almost anybody, is too bewildering for oneself. Ever truly yours, + Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + A Rectorial Address need probably not have been extemporized, but it would + also have been irksome to him to prepare. He was not accustomed to + uttering himself in prose except within the limits, and under the + incitements, of private correspondence. The ceremonial publicity attaching + to all official proceedings would also have inevitably been a trial to + him. He did at one of the Wordsworth Society meetings speak a sentence + from the chair, in the absence of the appointed chairman, who had not yet + arrived; and when he had received his degree from the University of + Edinburgh he was persuaded to say a few words to the assembled students, + in which I believe he thanked them for their warm welcome; but such + exceptions only proved the rule. + </p> + <p> + We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes flowed + from him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, due to a + nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; and that the + effusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike old friends and new, + arose also from a momentary want of self-possession. We may admit this the + more readily that in both cases it was allied to real kindness of + intention, above all in the latter, where the fear of seeming cold towards + even a friend's friend, strove increasingly with the defective memory for + names and faces which were not quite familiar to him. He was also + profoundly averse to the idea of posing as a man of superior gifts; having + indeed, in regard to social intercourse, as little of the fastidiousness + of genius as of its bohemianism. He, therefore, made it a rule, from the + moment he took his place as a celebrity in the London world, to exert + himself for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a dinner-table, whether + their own mental resources were great or small; and this gave rise to a + frequent effort at conversation, which converted itself into a habit, and + ended by carrying him away. This at least was his own conviction in the + matter. The loud voice, which so many persons must have learned to think + habitual with him, bore also traces of this half-unconscious nervous + stimulation.* It was natural to him in anger or excitement, but did not + express his gentler or more equable states of feeling; and when he read to + others on a subject which moved him, his utterance often subsided into a + tremulous softness which left it scarcely audible. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Miss Browning reminds me that loud speaking had become + natural to him through the deafness of several of his + intimate friends: Landor, Kirkup, Barry Cornwall, and + previously his uncle Reuben, whose hearing had been impaired + in early life by a blow from a cricket ball. This fact + necessarily modifies my impression of the case, but does not + quite destroy it. +</pre> + <p> + The mental conditions under which his powers of sympathy were exercised + imposed no limits on his spontaneous human kindness. This characteristic + benevolence, or power of love, is not fully represented in Mr. Browning's + works; it is certainly not prominent in those of the later period, during + which it found the widest scope in his life; but he has in some sense + given its measure in what was intended as an illustration of the opposite + quality. He tells us, in 'Fifine at the Fair', that while the best + strength of women is to be found in their love, the best product of a man + is only yielded to hate. It is the 'indignant wine' which has been wrung + from the grape plant by its external mutilation. He could depict it + dramatically in more malignant forms of emotion; but he could only think + of it personally as the reaction of a nobler feeling which has been + gratuitously outraged or repressed. + </p> + <p> + He more directly, and still more truly, described himself when he said at + about the same time, 'I have never at any period of my life been deaf to + an appeal made to me in the name of love.' He was referring to an + experience of many years before, in which he had even yielded his better + judgment to such an appeal; and it was love in the larger sense for which + the concession had been claimed. + </p> + <p> + It was impossible that so genuine a poet, and so real a man, should be + otherwise than sensitive to the varied forms of feminine attraction. He + avowedly preferred the society of women to that of men; they were, as I + have already said, his habitual confidants, and, evidently, his most + frequent correspondents; and though he could have dispensed with woman + friends as he dispensed with many other things—though he most often + won them without knowing it—his frank interest in their sex, and the + often caressing kindness of manner in which it was revealed, might justly + be interpreted by individual women into a conscious appeal to their + sympathy. It was therefore doubly remarkable that on the ground of + benevolence, he scarcely discriminated between the claim on him of a + woman, and that of a man; and his attitude towards women was in this + respect so distinctive as to merit some words of notice. It was large, + generous, and unconventional; but, for that very reason, it was not, in + the received sense of the word, chivalrous. Chivalry proceeds on the + assumption that women not only cannot, but should not, take care of + themselves in any active struggle with life; Mr. Browning had no + theoretical objection to a woman's taking care of herself. He saw no + reason why, if she was hit, she should not hit back again, or even why, if + she hit, she should not receive an answering blow. He responded swiftly to + every feminine appeal to his kindness or his protection, whether arising + from physical weakness or any other obvious cause of helplessness or + suffering; but the appeal in such cases lay first to his humanity, and + only in second order to his consideration of sex. He would have had a man + flogged who beat his wife; he would have had one flogged who ill-used a + child—or an animal: he was notedly opposed to any sweeping principle + or practice of vivisection. But he never quite understood that the + strongest women are weak, or at all events vulnerable, in the very fact of + their sex, through the minor traditions and conventions with which society + justly, indeed necessarily, surrounds them. Still less did he understand + those real, if impalpable, differences between men and women which + correspond to the difference of position. He admitted the broad + distinctions which have become proverbial, and are therefore only a rough + measure of the truth. He could say on occasion: 'You ought to <i>be</i> + better; you are a woman; I ought to <i>know</i> better; I am a man.' But + he had had too large an experience of human nature to attach permanent + weight to such generalizations; and they found certainly no expression in + his works. Scarcely an instance of a conventional, or so-called man's + woman, occurs in their whole range. Excepting perhaps the speaker in 'A + Woman's Last Word', 'Pompilia' and 'Mildred' are the nearest approach to + it; and in both of these we find qualities of imagination or thought which + place them outside the conventional type. He instinctively judged women, + both morally and intellectually, by the same standards as men; and when + confronted by some divergence of thought or feeling, which meant, in the + woman's case, neither quality nor defect in any strict sense of the word, + but simply a nature trained to different points of view, an element of + perplexity entered into his probable opposition. When the difference + presented itself in a neutral aspect, it affected him like the casual + peculiarities of a family or a group, or a casual disagreement between + things of the same kind. He would say to a woman friend: 'You women are so + different from men!' in the tone in which he might have said, 'You Irish, + or you Scotch, are so different from Englishmen;' or again, 'It is + impossible for a man to judge how a woman would act in such or such a + case; you are so different;' the case being sometimes one in which it + would be inconceivable to a normal woman, and therefore to the generality + of men, that she should act in any but one way. + </p> + <p> + The vague sense of mystery with which the poet's mind usually invests a + being of the opposite sex, had thus often in him its counterpart in a + puzzled dramatic curiosity which constituted an equal ground of interest. + </p> + <p> + This virtual admission of equality between the sexes, combined with his + Liberal principles to dispose him favourably towards the movement for + Female Emancipation. He approved of everything that had been done for the + higher instruction of women, and would, not very long ago, have supported + their admission to the Franchise. But he was so much displeased by the + more recent action of some of the lady advocates of Women's Rights, that, + during the last year of his life, after various modifications of opinion, + he frankly pledged himself to the opposite view. He had even visions of + writing a tragedy or drama in support of it. The plot was roughly + sketched, and some dialogue composed, though I believe no trace of this + remains. + </p> + <p> + It is almost implied by all I have said, that he possessed in every mood + the charm of perfect simplicity of manner. On this point he resembled his + father. His tastes lay also in the direction of great simplicity of life, + though circumstances did not allow of his indulging them to the same + extent. It may interest those who never saw him to know that he always + dressed as well as the occasion required, and always with great + indifference to the subject. In Florence he wore loose clothes which were + adapted to the climate; in London his coats were cut by a good tailor in + whatever was the prevailing fashion; the change was simply with him an + incident of the situation. He had also a look of dainty cleanliness which + was heightened by the smooth healthy texture of the skin, and in later + life by the silvery whiteness of his hair. + </p> + <p> + His best photographic likenesses were those taken by Mr. Fradelle in 1881, + Mr. Cameron and Mr. William Grove in 1888 and 1889. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 21 + </h2> + <h3> + 1887-1889 + </h3> + <p> + Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning—Removal to De Vere Gardens—Symptoms + of failing Strength—New Poems; New Edition of his Works—Letters + to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady Martin—Primiero and + Venice—Letters to Miss Keep—The last Year in London—Asolo—Letters + to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. + </p> + <p> + The last years of Mr. Browning's life were introduced by two auspicious + events, in themselves of very unequal importance, but each in its own way + significant for his happiness and his health. One was his son's marriage + on October 4, 1887, to Miss Fannie Coddington, of New York, a lady towards + whom Mr. Barrett Browning had been strongly attracted when he was a very + young man and she little more than a child; the other, his own removal + from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens, which took place in the previous + June. The change of residence had long been with him only a question of + opportunity. He was once even in treaty for a piece of ground at + Kensington, and intended building a house. That in which he had lived for + so many years had faults of construction and situation which the lapse of + time rendered only more conspicuous; the Regent's Canal Bill had also + doomed it to demolition; and when an opening presented itself for securing + one in all essentials more suitable, he was glad to seize it, though at + the eleventh hour. He had mentally fixed on the new locality in those + earlier days in which he still thought his son might eventually settle in + London; and it possessed at the same time many advantages for himself. It + was warmer and more sheltered than any which he could have found on the + north side of the Park; and, in that close vicinity to Kensington Gardens, + walking might be contemplated as a pleasure, instead of mere compulsory + motion from place to place. It was only too soon apparent that the time + had passed when he could reap much benefit from the event; but he became + aware from the first moment of his installation in the new home that the + conditions of physical life had become more favourable for him. He found + an almost pathetic pleasure in completing the internal arrangements of the + well-built, commodious house. It seems, on looking back, as if the veil + had dropped before his eyes which sometimes shrouds the keenest vision in + face of an impending change; and he had imagined, in spite of casual + utterances which disclaimed the hope, that a new lease of life was being + given to him. He had for several years been preparing for the more roomy + dwelling which he would probably some day inhabit; and handsome pieces of + old furniture had been stowed away in the house in Warwick Crescent, + pending the occasion for their use. He loved antiquities of this kind, in + a manner which sometimes recalled his father's affection for old books; + and most of these had been bought in Venice, where frequent visits to the + noted curiosity-shops had been his one bond of habit with his tourist + countrymen in that city. They matched the carved oak and massive gildings + and valuable tapestries which had carried something of Casa Guidi into his + first London home. Brass lamps that had once hung inside chapels in some + Catholic church, had long occupied the place of the habitual gaselier; and + to these was added in the following year one of silver, also brought from + Venice—the Jewish 'Sabbath lamp'. Another acquisition, made only a + few months, if indeed so long, before he left London for the last time, + was that of a set of casts representing the Seasons, which were to stand + at intervals on brackets in a certain unsightly space on his drawing-room + wall; and he had said of these, which I think his son was procuring for + him: 'Only my four little heads, and then I shall not buy another thing + for the house'—in a tone of childlike satisfaction at his completed + work. + </p> + <p> + This summer he merely went to St. Moritz, where he and his sister were, + for the greater part of their stay, again guests of Mrs. Bloomfield Moore. + He was determined to give the London winter a fuller trial in the more + promising circumstances of his new life, and there was much to be done in + De Vere Gardens after his return. His father's six thousand books, + together with those he had himself accumulated, were for the first time to + be spread out in their proper array, instead of crowding together in rows, + behind and behind each other. The new bookcases, which could stand in the + large new study, were waiting to receive them. He did not know until he + tried to fulfil it how greatly the task would tax his strength. The + library was, I believe, never completely arranged. + </p> + <p> + During this winter of 1887-8 his friends first perceived that a change had + come over him. They did not realize that his life was drawing to a close; + it was difficult to do so when so much of the former elasticity remained; + when he still proclaimed himself 'quite well' so long as he was not + definitely suffering. But he was often suffering; one terrible cold + followed another. There was general evidence that he had at last grown + old. He, however, made no distinct change in his mode of life. Old habits, + suspended by his longer imprisonments to the house, were resumed as soon + as he was set free. He still dined out; still attended the private view of + every, or almost every art exhibition. He kept up his unceasing + correspondence—in one or two cases voluntarily added to it; though + he would complain day after day that his fingers ached from the number of + hours through which he had held his pen. One of the interesting letters of + this period was written to Mr. George Bainton, of Coventry, to be used, as + that gentleman tells me, in the preparation of a lecture on the 'Art of + Effective Written Composition'. It confirms the statement I have had + occasion to make, that no extraneous influence ever permanently impressed + itself on Mr. Browning's style. + </p> + <p> + 29, De Vere Gardens: Oct. 6, '87. + </p> + <p> + Dear Sir,—I was absent from London when your kind letter reached + this house, to which I removed some time ago—hence the delay in + acknowledging your kindness and replying, in some degree, to your request. + All I can say, however, is this much—and very little—that, by + the indulgence of my father and mother, I was allowed to live my own life + and choose my own course in it; which, having been the same from the + beginning to the end, necessitated a permission to read nearly all sorts + of books, in a well-stocked and very miscellaneous library. I had no other + direction than my parents' taste for whatever was highest and best in + literature; but I found out for myself many forgotten fields which proved + the richest of pastures: and, so far as a preference of a particular + 'style' is concerned, I believe mine was just the same at first as at + last. I cannot name any one author who exclusively influenced me in that + respect,—as to the fittest expression of thought—but thought + itself had many impulsions from very various sources, a matter not to your + present purpose. I repeat, this is very little to say, but all in my power—and + it is heartily at your service—if not as of any value, at least as a + proof that I gratefully feel your kindness, and am, dear Sir Yours very + truly, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + In December 1887 he wrote 'Rosny', the first poem in 'Asolando', and that + which perhaps most displays his old subtle dramatic power; it was followed + by 'Beatrice Signorini' and 'Flute-Music'. Of the 'Bad Dreams' two or + three were also written in London, I think, during that winter. The 'Ponte + dell' Angelo' was imagined during the next autumn in Venice. 'White + Witchcraft' had been suggested in the same summer by a letter from a + friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be + seen there. In the spring of 1888 he began revising his works for the + last, and now entirely uniform edition, which was issued in monthly + volumes, and completed by the July of 1889. Important verbal corrections + were made in 'The Inn Album', though not, I think, in many of the later + poems; but that in which he found most room for improvement was, very + naturally, 'Pauline'; and he wrote concerning it to Mr. Smith the + following interesting letter. + </p> + <p> + 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Feb. 27, '88. + </p> + <p> + My dear Smith,—When I received the Proofs of the 1st. vol. on Friday + evening, I made sure of returning them next day—so accurately are + they printed. But on looking at that unlucky 'Pauline', which I have not + touched for half a century, a sudden impulse came over me to take the + opportunity of just correcting the most obvious faults of expression, + versification and construction,—letting the <i>thoughts</i>—such + as they are—remain exactly as at first: I have only treated the + imperfect expression of these just as I have now and then done for an + amateur friend, if he asked me and I liked him enough to do so. Not a line + is displaced, none added, none taken away. I have just sent it to the + printer's with an explanatory word: and told him that he will have less + trouble with all the rest of the volumes put together than with this + little portion. I expect to return all the rest to-morrow or next day. + </p> + <p> + As for the sketch—the portrait—it admits of no very superior + treatment: but, as it is the only one which makes me out youngish,—I + should like to know if an artist could not strengthen the thing by a + pencil touch or two in a few minutes—improve the eyes, eyebrows, and + mouth somewhat. The head too wants improvement: were Pen here he could + manage it all in a moment. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + Any attempt at modifying the expressed thoughts of his twenty-first year + would have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with the work of + another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, if it had + been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words what I have + already asserted, that the power of detail correction either was, or had + become by experience, very strong in him. + </p> + <p> + The history of this summer of 1888 is partly given in a letter to Lady + Martin. + </p> + <p> + 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Aug. 12, '88. + </p> + <p> + Dear Lady Martin,—The date of your kind letter,—June 18,—would + affect me indeed, but for the good conscience I retain despite of + appearances. So uncertain have I been as to the course we should take,—my + sister and myself—when the time came for leaving town, that it + seemed as if 'next week' might be the eventful week when all doubts would + disappear—perhaps the strange cold weather and interminable rain + made it hard to venture from under one's roof even in fancy of being + better lodged elsewhere. This very day week it was the old story—cold—then + followed the suffocating eight or nine tropical days which forbade any + more delay, and we leave to-morrow for a place called Primiero, near + Feltre—where my son and his wife assure us we may be comfortably—and + coolly—housed, until we can accompany them to Venice, which we may + stay at for a short time. You remember our troubles at Llangollen about + the purchase of a Venetian house . . . ? My son, however, nothing daunted, + and acting under abler counsels than I was fortunate enough to obtain,* + has obtained a still more desirable acquisition, in the shape of the + well-known Rezzonico Palace (that of Pope Clement 13th)—and, I + believe, is to be congratulated on his bargain. I cannot profess the same + interest in this as in the earlier object of his ambition, but am quite + satisfied by the evident satisfaction of the 'young people'. So,—by + the old law of compensation,—while we may expect pleasant days + abroad—our chance is gone of once again enjoying your company in + your own lovely Vale of Llangollen;—had we not been pulled otherwise + by the inducements we could not resist,—another term of delightful + weeks—each tipped with a sweet starry Sunday at the little church + leading to the House Beautiful where we took our rest of an evening spent + always memorably—this might have been our fortunate lot once again! + As it is, perhaps we need more energetic treatment than we should get with + you —for both of us are more oppressed than ever by the exigencies + of the lengthy season, and require still more bracing air than the gently + lulling temperature of Wales. May it be doing you, and dear Sir Theodore, + all the good you deserve—throwing in the share due to us, who must + forego it! With all love from us both, ever affectionately yours Robert + Browning. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Those of Mr. Alexander Malcolm. +</pre> + <p> + He did start for Italy on the following day, but had become so ill, that + he was on the point of postponing his departure. He suffered throughout + the journey as he had never suffered on any journey before; and during his + first few days at Primiero, could only lead the life of an invalid. He + rallied, however, as usual, under the potent effects of quiet, fresh air, + and sunshine; and fully recovered his normal state before proceeding to + Venice, where the continued sense of physical health combined with many + extraneous circumstances to convert his proposed short stay into a long + one. A letter from the mountains, addressed to a lady who had never been + abroad, and to whom he sometimes wrote with more descriptive detail than + to other friends, gives a touching glimpse of his fresh delight in the + beauties of nature, and his tender constant sympathy with the animal + creation. + </p> + <p> + Primiero: Sept. 7, '88. + </p> + <p> + . . . . . + </p> + <p> + 'The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, ever since the + clearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you in my last. It is, I + am more and more confirmed in believing, the most beautiful place I was + ever resident in: far more so than Gressoney or even St.-Pierre de + Chartreuse. You would indeed delight in seeing the magnificence of the + mountains,—the range on either side, which morning and evening, in + turn, transmute literally to gold,—I mean what I say. Their utterly + bare ridges of peaks and crags of all shape, quite naked of verdure, glow + like yellow ore; and, at times, there is a silver change, as the sun + prevails or not. + </p> + <p> + 'The valley is one green luxuriance on all sides; Indian corn, with beans, + gourds, and even cabbages, filling up the interstices; and the flowers, + though not presenting any novelty to my uninstructed eyes, yet surely more + large and purely developed than I remember to have seen elsewhere. For + instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must be above ten feet high, + every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me as peculiar, every leaf on the + stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if no insect existed to spoil them + by a notch or speck. . . . + </p> + <p> + '. . . Did I tell you we had a little captive fox,—the most engaging + of little vixens? To my great joy she has broken her chain and escaped, + never to be recaptured, I trust. The original wild and untameable nature + was to be plainly discerned even in this early stage of the whelp's life: + she dug herself, with such baby feet, a huge hole, the use of which was + evident, when, one day, she pounced thence on a stray turkey—allured + within reach by the fragments of fox's breakfast,—the intruder + escaping with the loss of his tail. The creature came back one night to + explore the old place of captivity,—ate some food and retired. For + myself,—I continue absolutely well: I do not walk much, but for more + than amends, am in the open air all day long.' + </p> + <p> + No less striking is a short extract from a letter written in Venice to the + same friend, Miss Keep. + </p> + <p> + Ca' Alvise: Oct. 16, '88. + </p> + <p> + 'Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my + mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom + window commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagulls + flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long + purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently + all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb sends before + it a long column of its own essence apparently: so my day begins.' + </p> + <p> + We feel, as we read these late, and even later words, that the lyric + imagination was renewing itself in the incipient dissolution of other + powers. It is the Browning of 'Pippa Passes' who speaks in them. + </p> + <p> + He suffered less on the whole during the winter of 1888-9. It was already + advanced when he returned to England; and the attacks of cold and asthma + were either shorter or less frequent. He still maintained throughout the + season his old social routine, not omitting his yearly visit, on the + anniversary of Waterloo, to Lord Albemarle, its last surviving veteran. He + went for some days to Oxford during the commemoration week, and had for + the first, as also last time, the pleasure of Dr. Jowett's almost + exclusive society at his beloved Balliol College. He proceeded with his + new volume of poems. A short letter written to Professor Knight, June 16, + and of which the occasion speaks for itself, fitly closes the labours of + his life; for it states his view of the position and function of poetry, + in one brief phrase, which might form the text to an exhaustive treatise + upon them. + </p> + <p> + 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: June 16, 1889. + </p> + <p> + My dear Professor Knight,—I am delighted to hear that there is a + likelihood of your establishing yourself in Glasgow, and illustrating + Literature as happily as you have expounded Philosophy at St. Andrews. It + is certainly the right order of things: Philosophy first, and Poetry, + which is its highest outcome, afterward—and much harm has been done + by reversing the natural process. How capable you are of doing justice to + the highest philosophy embodied in poetry, your various studies of + Wordsworth prove abundantly; and for the sake of both Literature and + Philosophy I wish you success with all my heart. + </p> + <p> + Believe me, dear Professor Knight, yours very truly, Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + But he experienced, when the time came, more than his habitual + disinclination for leaving home. A distinct shrinking from the fatigue of + going to Italy now added itself to it; for he had suffered when travelling + back in the previous winter, almost as much as on the outward journey, + though he attributed the distress to a different cause: his nerves were, + he thought, shaken by the wearing discomforts incidental on a broken + tooth. He was for the first time painfully sensitive to the vibration of + the train. He had told his friends, both in Venice and London, that so far + as he was able to determine, he would never return to Italy. But it was + necessary he should go somewhere, and he had no alternative plan. For a + short time in this last summer he entertained the idea of a visit to + Scotland; it had indeed definitely shaped itself in his mind; but an + incident, trivial in itself, though he did not think it so, destroyed the + first scheme, and it was then practically too late to form another. During + the second week in August the weather broke. There could no longer be any + question of the northward journey without even a fixed end in view. His + son and daughter had taken possession of their new home, the Palazzo + Rezzonico, and were anxious to see him and Miss Browning there; their + wishes naturally had weight. The casting vote in favour of Venice was + given by a letter from Mrs. Bronson, proposing Asolo as the intermediate + stage. She had fitted up for herself a little summer retreat there, and + promised that her friends should, if they joined her, be also comfortably + installed. The journey was this time propitious. It was performed without + imprudent haste, and Mr. Browning reached Asolo unfatigued and to all + appearance well. + </p> + <p> + He saw this, his first love among Italian cities, at a season of the year + more favourable to its beauty than even that of his first visit; yet he + must himself have been surprised by the new rapture of admiration which it + created in him, and which seemed to grow with his lengthened stay. This + state of mind was the more striking, that new symptoms of his physical + decline were now becoming apparent, and were in themselves of a depressing + kind. He wrote to a friend in England, that the atmosphere of Asolo, far + from being oppressive, produced in him all the effects of mountain air, + and he was conscious of difficulty of breathing whenever he walked up + hill. He also suffered, as the season advanced, great inconvenience from + cold. The rooms occupied by himself and his sister were both unprovided + with fireplaces; and though the daily dinner with Mrs. Bronson obviated + the discomfort of the evenings, there remained still too many hours of the + autumnal day in which the impossibility of heating their own little + apartment must have made itself unpleasantly felt. The latter drawback + would have been averted by the fulfilment of Mr. Browning's first plan, to + be in Venice by the beginning of October, and return to the comforts of + his own home before the winter had quite set in; but one slight motive for + delay succeeded another, till at last a more serious project introduced + sufficient ground of detention. He seemed possessed by a strange buoyancy—an + almost feverish joy in life, which blunted all sensations of physical + distress, or helped him to misinterpret them. When warned against the + imprudence of remaining where he knew he suffered from cold, and believed, + rightly or wrongly, that his asthmatic tendencies were increased, he would + reply that he was growing acclimatized—that he was quite well. And, + in a fitful or superficial sense, he must have been so. + </p> + <p> + His letters of that period are one continuous picture, glowing with his + impressions of the things which they describe. The same words will repeat + themselves as the same subject presents itself to his pen; but the impulse + to iteration scarcely ever affects us as mechanical. It seems always a + fresh response to some new stimulus to thought or feeling, which he has + received. These reach him from every side. It is not only the Asolo of + this peaceful later time which has opened before him, but the Asolo of + 'Pippa Passes' and 'Sordello'; that which first stamped itself on his + imagination in the echoes of the Court life of Queen Catharine,* and of + the barbaric wars of the Eccelini. Some of his letters dwell especially on + these early historical associations: on the strange sense of reopening the + ancient chronicle which he had so deeply studied fifty years before. The + very phraseology of the old Italian text, which I am certain he had never + glanced at from that distant time, is audible in an account of the + massacre of San Zenone, the scene of which he has been visiting. To the + same correspondent he says that his two hours' drive to Asolo 'seemed to + be a dream;' and again, after describing, or, as he thinks, only trying to + describe some beautiful feature of the place, 'but it is indescribable!' + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Catharine Cornaro, the dethroned queen of Cyprus. +</pre> + <p> + A letter addressed to Mrs. FitzGerald, October 8, 1889, is in part a + fitting sequel to that which he had written to her from the same spot, + eleven years before. + </p> + <p> + '. . . Fortunately there is little changed here: my old Albergo,—ruinous + with earthquake—is down and done with—but few novelties are + observable—except the regrettable one that the silk industry has + been transported elsewhere—to Cornuda and other places nearer the + main railway. No more Pippas—at least of the silk-winding sort! + </p> + <p> + 'But the pretty type is far from extinct. + </p> + <p> + 'Autumn is beginning to paint the foliage, but thin it as well; and the + sea of fertility all round our height, which a month ago showed + pomegranates and figs and chestnuts,—walnuts and apples all rioting + together in full glory,—all this is daily disappearing. I say + nothing of the olive and the vine. I find the Turret rather the worse for + careful weeding—the hawks which used to build there have been "shot + for food"—and the echo is sadly curtailed of its replies; still, + things are the same in the main. Shall I ever see them again, when—as + I suppose—we leave for Venice in a fortnight? . . .' + </p> + <p> + In the midst of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks the old + keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges for what living + things were to be found there. He would whistle softly to the lizards + basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old power of + attracting them. + </p> + <p> + On the 15th of October he wrote to Mrs. Skirrow, after some preliminary + description: + </p> + <p> + Then—such a view over the whole Lombard plain; not a site in view, + or <i>approximate</i> view at least, without its story. Autumn is now + painting all the abundance of verdure,—figs, pomegranates, + chestnuts, and vines, and I don't know what else,—all in a wonderful + confusion,—and now glowing with all the colours of the rainbow. Some + weeks back, the little town was glorified by the visit of a decent + theatrical troop who played in a theatre <i>in</i>side the old palace of + Queen Catharine Cornaro—utilized also as a prison in which I am + informed are at present full five if not six malefactors guilty of + stealing grapes, and the like enormities. Well, the troop played for a + fortnight together exceedingly well—high tragedy and low comedy—and + the stage-box which I occupied cost 16 francs. The theatre had been out of + use for six years, for we are out of the way and only a baiting-place for + a company pushing on to Venice. In fine, we shall stay here probably for a + week or more,—and then proceed to Pen, at the Rezzonico; a month + there, and then homewards! . . . + </p> + <p> + I delight in finding that the beloved Husband and precious friend manages + to do without the old yoke about his neck, and enjoys himself as never + anybody had a better right to do. I continue to congratulate him on his + emancipation and ourselves on a more frequent enjoyment of his company in + consequence.* Give him my true love; take mine, dearest friend,—and + my sister's love to you both goes with it. Ever affectionately yours + Robert Browning. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Mr. Skirrow had just resigned his post of Master in + Chancery. +</pre> + <p> + The cry of 'homewards!' now frequently recurs in his letters. We find it + in one written a week later to Mr. G. M. Smith, otherwise very expressive + of his latest condition of mind and feeling. + </p> + <p> + Asolo, Veneto, Italia: Oct. 22, '89. + </p> + <p> + My dear Smith,—I was indeed delighted to get your letter two days + ago— for there <i>are</i> such accidents as the loss of a parcel, + even when it has been despatched from so important a place as this city—for + a regular city it is, you must know, with all the rights of one,—older + far than Rome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name to the + adjoining hills. 'Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the walls still + surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, and you even + overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900 souls—in + the city Proper, that is—for the territory below and around contains + some 10,000. But we are at the very top of things, garlanded about, as it + were, with a narrow line of houses,—some palatial, such as you would + be glad to see in London,—and above all towers the old dwelling of + Queen Cornaro, who was forced to exchange her Kingdom of Cyprus for this + pretty but petty dominion where she kept state in a mimic Court, with + Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, for her secretary—who has commemorated + the fact in his 'Asolani' or dialogues inspired by the place: and I do + assure you that, after some experience of beautiful sights in Italy and + elsewhere I know nothing comparable to the view from the Queen's tower and + palace, still perfect in every respect. Whenever you pay Pen and his wife + the visit you are pledged to, * it will go hard but you spend five hours + in a journey to Asolo. The one thing I am disappointed in is to find that + the silk-cultivation with all the pretty girls who were engaged in it are + transported to Cornuda and other places,—nearer the railway, I + suppose: and to this may be attributed the decrease in the number of + inhabitants. The weather when I wrote last <i>was</i> 'blue and blazing—(at + noon-day)—' but we share in the general plague of rain,—had a + famous storm yesterday: while to-day is blue and sunny as ever. Lastly, + for your admonition: we <i>have</i> a perfect telegraphic communication; + and at the passage above, where I put a * I was interrupted by the arrival + of a telegram: thank you all the same for your desire to relieve my + anxiety. And now, to our immediate business— which is only to keep + thanking you for your constant goodness, present and future: do with the + book just as you will. I fancy it is bigger in bulk than usual. As for the + 'proofs'—I go at the end of the month to Venice, whither you will + please to send whatever is necessary. . . . I shall do well to say as + little as possible of my good wishes for you and your family, for it comes + to much the same thing as wishing myself prosperity: no matter, my + sister's kindest regards shall excuse mine, and I will only add that I am, + as ever, Affectionately yours Robert Browning. + </p> + <p> + A general quickening of affectionate impulse seemed part of this last leap + in the socket of the dying flame. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter 22 + </h2> + <h3> + 1889 + </h3> + <p> + Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo—Venice—Letter to Mr. G. + Moulton-Barrett—Lines in the 'Athenaeum'—Letter to Miss Keep—Illness—Death— + Funeral Ceremonial at Venice—Publication of 'Asolando'—Interment + in Poets' Corner. + </p> + <p> + He had said in writing to Mrs. FitzGerald, 'Shall I ever see them' (the + things he is describing) 'again?' If not then, soon afterwards, he + conceived a plan which was to insure his doing so. On a piece of ground + belonging to the old castle, stood the shell of a house. The two + constituted one property which the Municipality of Asolo had hitherto + refused to sell. It had been a dream of Mr. Browning's life to possess a + dwelling, however small, in some beautiful spot, which should place him + beyond the necessity of constantly seeking a new summer resort, and above + the alternative of living at an inn, or accepting—as he sometimes + feared, abusing—the hospitality of his friends. He was suddenly + fascinated by the idea of buying this piece of ground; and, with the + efficient help which his son could render during his absence, completing + the house, which should be christened 'Pippa's Tower'. It was evident, he + said in one of his letters, that for his few remaining years his summer + wanderings must always end in Venice. What could he do better than secure + for himself this resting-place by the way? + </p> + <p> + His offer of purchase was made through Mrs. Bronson, to Count Loredano and + other important members of the municipality, and their personal assent to + it secured. But the town council was on the eve of re-election; no + important business could be transacted by it till after this event; and + Mr. Browning awaited its decision till the end of October at Asolo, and + again throughout November in Venice, without fully understanding the + delay. The vote proved favourable; but the night on which it was taken was + that of his death. + </p> + <p> + The consent thus given would have been only a first step towards the + accomplishment of his wish. It was necessary that it should be ratified by + the Prefecture of Treviso, in the district of which Asolo lies; and Mr. + Barrett Browning, who had determined to carry on the negotiations, met + with subsequent opposition in the higher council. This has now, however, + been happily overcome. + </p> + <p> + A comprehensive interest attaches to one more letter of the Asolo time. It + was addressed to Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George + Moulton-Barrett. + </p> + <p> + Asolo, Veneto: Oct. 22, '89. + </p> + <p> + My dear George,—It was a great pleasure to get your kind letter; + though after some delay. We were not in the Tyrol this year, but have been + for six weeks or more in this little place which strikes me,—as it + did fifty years ago, which is something to say, considering that, properly + speaking, it was the first spot of Italian soil I ever set foot upon— + having proceeded to Venice by sea—and thence here. It is an ancient + city, older than Rome, and the scene of Queen Catharine Cornaro's exile, + where she held a mock court, with all its attendants, on a miniature + scale; Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, being her secretary. Her palace is + still above us all, the old fortifications surround the hill-top, and + certain of the houses are stately—though the population is not above + 1,000 souls: the province contains many more of course. But the immense + charm of the surrounding country is indescribable—I have never seen + its like—the Alps on one side, the Asolan mountains all round,—and + opposite, the vast Lombard plain,—with indications of Venice, Padua, + and the other cities, visible to a good eye on a clear day; while + everywhere are sites of battles and sieges of bygone days, described in + full by the historians of the Middle Ages. + </p> + <p> + We have a valued friend here, Mrs. Bronson, who for years has been our + hostess at Venice, and now is in possession of a house here (built into + the old city wall)—she was induced to choose it through what I have + said about the beauties of the place: and through her care and kindness we + are comfortably lodged close by. We think of leaving in a week or so for + Venice—guests of Pen and his wife; and after a short stay with them + we shall return to London. Pen came to see us for a couple of days: I was + hardly prepared for his surprise and admiration which quite equalled my + own and that of my sister. All is happily well with them—their + palazzo excites the wonder of everybody, so great is Pen's cleverness, and + extemporised architectural knowledge, as apparent in all he has done + there; why, <i>why</i> will you not go and see him there? He and his wife + are very hospitable and receive many visitors. Have I told you that there + was a desecrated chapel which he has restored in honour of his mother— + putting up there the inscription by Tommaseo now above Casa Guidi? + </p> + <p> + Fannie is all you say,—and most dear and precious to us all. . . . + Pen's medal to which you refer, is awarded to him in spite of his written + renunciation of any sort of wish to contend for a prize. He will now + resume painting and sculpture—having been necessarily occupied with + the superintendence of his workmen—a matter capitally managed, I am + told. For the rest, both Sarianna and myself are very well; I have just + sent off my new volume of verses for publication. The complete edition of + the works of E. B. B. begins in a few days. + </p> + <p> + The second part of this letter is very forcibly written, and, in a certain + sense, more important than the first; but I suppress it by the desire of + Mr. Browning's sister and son, and in complete concurrence with their + judgment in the matter. It was a systematic defence of the anger aroused + in him by a lately published reference to his wife's death; and though its + reasonings were unanswerable as applied to the causes of his emotion, they + did not touch the manner in which it had been displayed. The incident was + one which deserved only to be forgotten; and if an injudicious act had not + preserved its memory, no word of mine should recall it. Since, however, it + has been thought fit to include the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald' in a + widely circulated Bibliography of Mr. Browning's Works,* I owe it to him + to say—what I believe is only known to his sister and myself—that + there was a moment in which he regretted those lines, and would willingly + have withdrawn them. This was the period, unfortunately short, which + intervened between his sending them to the 'Athenaeum', and their + appearance there. When once public opinion had expressed itself upon them + in its too extreme forms of sympathy and condemnation, the pugnacity of + his mind found support in both, and regret was silenced if not destroyed. + In so far as his published words remained open to censure, I may also, + without indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the + merely sympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhaps + disgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow. He + spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. The + events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though never + forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which so unexpectedly met + his eye, in a vividness of remembrance which was reality. 'I felt as if + she had died yesterday,' he said some days later to a friend, in half + deprecation, half denial, of the too great fierceness of his reaction. He + only recovered his balance in striking the counter-blow. That he could be + thus affected at an age usually destructive of the more violent emotions, + is part of the mystery of those closing days which had already overtaken + him. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * That contained in Mr. Sharp's 'Life'. A still more recent + publication + gives the lines in full. +</pre> + <p> + By the first of November he was in Venice with his son and daughter; and + during the three following weeks was apparently well, though a physician + whom he met at a dinner party, and to whom he had half jokingly given his + pulse to feel, had learned from it that his days were numbered. He wrote + to Miss Keep on the 9th of the month: + </p> + <p> + '. . . Mrs. Bronson has bought a house at Asolo, and beautified it indeed,—niched + as it is in an old tower of the fortifications still partly surrounding + the city (for a city it is), and eighteen towers, more or less ruinous, + are still discoverable there: it is indeed a delightful place. Meantime, + to go on,—we came here, and had a pleasant welcome from our hosts—who + are truly magnificently lodged in this vast palazzo which my son has + really shown himself fit to possess, so surprising are his restorations + and improvements: the whole is all but complete, decorated,—that is, + renewed admirably in all respects. + </p> + <p> + 'What strikes me as most noteworthy is the cheerfulness and comfort of the + huge rooms. + </p> + <p> + 'The building is warmed throughout by a furnace and pipes. + </p> + <p> + 'Yesterday, on the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine, + blue sky,—snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, ever + suited my needs, bodily and intellectual, so well. + </p> + <p> + 'The first are satisfied—I am <i>quite</i> well, every breathing + inconvenience gone: and as for the latter, I got through whatever had + given me trouble in London. . . .' + </p> + <p> + But it was winter, even in Venice, and one day began with an actual fog. + He insisted, notwithstanding, on taking his usual walk on the Lido. He + caught a bronchial cold of which the symptoms were aggravated not only by + the asthmatic tendency, but by what proved to be exhaustion of the heart; + and believing as usual that his liver alone was at fault, he took little + food, and refused wine altogether.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * He always declined food when he was unwell; and maintained + that in this respect the instinct of animals was far more + just than the idea often prevailing among human beings that + a failing appetite should be assisted or coerced. +</pre> + <p> + He did not yield to the sense of illness; he did not keep his bed. Some + feverish energy must have supported him through this avoidance of every + measure which might have afforded even temporary strength or relief. On + Friday, the 29th, he wrote to a friend in London that he had waited thus + long for the final answer from Asolo, but would wait no longer. He would + start for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday of the + following week. It was true 'he had caught a cold; he felt sadly + asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel; but he hoped for the best, and would + write again soon.' He wrote again the following day, declaring himself + better. He had been punished, he said, for long-standing neglect of his + 'provoking liver'; but a simple medicine, which he had often taken before, + had this time also relieved the oppression of his chest; his friend was + not to be uneasy about him; 'it was in his nature to get into scrapes of + this kind, but he always managed, somehow or other, to extricate himself + from them.' He concluded with fresh details of his hopes and plans. + </p> + <p> + In the ensuing night the bronchial distress increased; and in the morning + he consented to see his son's physician, Dr. Cini, whose investigation of + the case at once revealed to him its seriousness. The patient had been + removed two days before, from the second storey of the house, which the + family then inhabited, to an entresol apartment just above the + ground-floor, from which he could pass into the dining-room without + fatigue. Its lower ceilings gave him (erroneously) an impression of + greater warmth, and he had imagined himself benefited by the change. A + freer circulation of air was now considered imperative, and he was carried + to Mrs. Browning's spacious bedroom, where an open fireplace supplied both + warmth and ventilation, and large windows admitted all the sunshine of the + Grand Canal. Everything was done for him which professional skill and + loving care could do. Mrs. Browning, assisted by her husband, and by a + young lady who was then her guest,* filled the place of the trained nurses + until these could arrive; for a few days the impending calamity seemed + even to have been averted. The bronchial attack was overcome. Mr. Browning + had once walked from the bed to the sofa; his sister, whose anxiety had + perhaps been spared the full knowledge of his state, could send comforting + reports to his friends at home. But the enfeebled heart had made its last + effort. Attacks of faintness set in. Special signs of physical strength + maintained themselves until within a few hours of the end. On Wednesday, + December 11, a consultation took place between Dr. Cini, Dr. da Vigna, and + Dr. Minich; and the opinion was then expressed for the first time that + recovery, though still possible, was not within the bounds of probability. + Weakness, however, rapidly gained upon him towards the close of the + following day. Two hours before midnight of this Thursday, December 12, he + breathed his last. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Miss Evelyn Barclay, now Mrs. Douglas Giles. +</pre> + <p> + He had been a good patient. He took food and medicine whenever they were + offered to him. Doctors and nurses became alike warmly interested in him. + His favourite among the latter was, I think, the Venetian, a widow, + Margherita Fiori, a simple kindly creature who had known much sorrow. To + her he said, about five hours before the end, 'I feel much worse. I know + now that I must die.' He had shown at intervals a perception, even + conviction, of his danger; but the excitement of the brain, caused by + exhaustion on the one hand and the necessary stimulants on the other, must + have precluded all systematic consciousness of approaching death. He + repeatedly assured his family that he was not suffering. + </p> + <p> + A painful and urgent question now presented itself for solution: Where + should his body find its last rest? He had said to his sister in the + foregoing summer, that he wished to be buried wherever he might die: if in + England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy, with + his wife. Circumstances all pointed to his removal to Florence; but a + recent decree had prohibited further interment in the English Cemetery + there, and the town had no power to rescind it. When this was known in + Venice, that city begged for itself the privilege of retaining the + illustrious guest, and rendering him the last honours. For the moment the + idea even recommended itself to Mr. Browning's son. But he felt bound to + make a last effort in the direction of the burial at Florence; and was + about to despatch a telegram, in which he invoked the mediation of Lord + Dufferin, when all difficulties were laid at rest by a message from the + Dean of Westminster, conveying his assent to an interment in the Abbey.* + He had already telegraphed for information concerning the date of the + funeral, with a view to the memorial service, which he intended to hold on + the same day. Nor would the further honour have remained for even + twenty-four hours ungranted, because unasked, but for the belief + prevailing among Mr. Browning's friends that there was no room for its + acceptance. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * The assent thus conveyed had assumed the form of an offer, + and was characterized as such by the Dean himself. +</pre> + <p> + It was still necessary to provide for the more immediate removal of the + body. Local custom forbade its retention after the lapse of two days and + nights; and only in view of the special circumstances of the case could a + short respite be granted to the family. Arrangements were therefore at + once made for a private service, to be conducted by the British Chaplain + in one of the great halls of the Rezzonico Palace; and by two o'clock of + the following day, Sunday, a large number of visitors and residents had + assembled there. The subsequent passage to the mortuary island of San + Michele had been organized by the city, and was to display so much of the + character of a public pageant as the hurried preparation allowed. The + chief municipal officers attended the service. When this had been + performed, the coffin was carried by eight firemen (pompieri), arrayed in + their distinctive uniform, to the massive, highly decorated municipal + barge (Barca delle Pompe funebri) which waited to receive it. It was + guarded during the transit by four 'uscieri' in 'gala' dress, two + sergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two of the firemen bearing torches: + the remainder of these following in a smaller boat. The barge was towed by + a steam launch of the Royal Italian Marine. The chief officers of the + city, the family and friends in their separate gondolas, completed the + procession. On arriving at San Michele, the firemen again received their + burden, and bore it to the chapel in which its place had been reserved. + </p> + <p> + When 'Pauline' first appeared, the Author had received, he never learned + from whom, a sprig of laurel enclosed with this quotation from the poem, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Trust in signs and omens. +</pre> + <p> + Very beautiful garlands were now piled about his bier, offerings of + friendship and affection. Conspicuous among these was the ceremonial + structure of metallic foliage and porcelain flowers, inscribed 'Venezia a + Roberto Browning', which represented the Municipality of Venice. On the + coffin lay one comprehensive symbol of the fulfilled prophecy: a wreath of + laurel-leaves which his son had placed there. + </p> + <p> + A final honour was decreed to the great English Poet by the city in which + he had died; the affixing of a memorial tablet to the outer wall of the + Rezzonico Palace. Since these pages were first written, the tablet has + been placed. It bears the following inscription: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + A + ROBERTO BROWNING + + MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO + IL 12 DICEMBRE 1889 + VENEZIA + POSE +</pre> + <p> + Below this, in the right-hand corner appear two lines selected from his + works: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Open my heart and you will see + Graved inside of it, 'Italy'. +</pre> + <p> + Nor were these the only expressions of Italian respect and sympathy. The + municipality of Florence sent its message of condolence. Asolo, poor in + all but memories, itself bore the expenses of a mural tablet for the house + which Mr. Browning had occupied. It is now known that Signor Crispi would + have appealed to Parliament to rescind the exclusion from the Florentine + cemetery, if the motive for doing so had been less promptly removed. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Browning's own country had indeed opened a way for the reunion of the + husband and wife. The idea had rapidly shaped itself in the public mind + that, since they might not rest side by side in Italy, they should be + placed together among the great of their own land; and it was understood + that the Dean would sanction Mrs. Browning's interment in the Abbey, if a + formal application to this end were made to him. But Mr. Barrett Browning + could not reconcile himself to the thought of disturbing his mother's + grave, so long consecrated to Florence by her warm love and by its + grateful remembrance; and at the desire of both surviving members of the + family the suggestion was set aside. + </p> + <p> + Two days after his temporary funeral, privately and at night, all that + remained of Robert Browning was conveyed to the railway station; and + thence, by a trusted servant, to England. The family followed within + twenty-four hours, having made the necessary preparations for a long + absence from Venice; and, travelling with the utmost speed, arrived in + London on the same day. The house in De Vere Gardens received its master + once more. + </p> + <p> + 'Asolando' was published on the day of Mr. Browning's death. The report of + his illness had quickened public interest in the forthcoming work, and his + son had the satisfaction of telling him of its already realized success, + while he could still receive a warm, if momentary, pleasure from the + intelligence. The circumstances of its appearance place it beyond ordinary + criticism; they place it beyond even an impartial analysis of its + contents. It includes one or two poems to which we would gladly assign a + much earlier date; I have been told on good authority that we may do this + in regard to one of them. It is difficult to refer the 'Epilogue' to a + coherent mood of any period of its author's life. It is certain, however, + that by far the greater part of the little volume was written in 1888-89, + and I believe all that is most serious in it was the product of the later + year. It possesses for many readers the inspiration of farewell words; for + all of us it has their pathos. + </p> + <p> + He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, on the 31st of + December, 1889. In this tardy act of national recognition England claimed + her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of his + countrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poet + to his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs. Browning's poem, 'The + Sleep', set to music by Dr. Bridge, were sung for the first time on this + occasion. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_CONC" id="link2H_CONC"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Conclusion + </h2> + <p> + A few words must still be said upon that purport and tendency of Robert + Browning's work, which has been defined by a few persons, and felt by very + many as his 'message'. + </p> + <p> + The definition has been disputed on the ground of Art. We are told by Mr. + Sharp, though in somewhat different words, that the poet, qua poet, cannot + deliver a 'message' such as directly addresses itself to the intellectual + or moral sense; since his special appeal to us lies not through the + substance, but through the form, or presentment, of what he has had to + say; since, therefore (by implication), in claiming for it an intellectual—as + distinct from an aesthetic—character, we ignore its function as + poetry. + </p> + <p> + It is difficult to argue justly, where the question at issue turns + practically on the meaning of a word. Mr. Sharp would, I think, be the + first to admit this; and it appears to me that, in the present case, he so + formulates his theory as to satisfy his artistic conscience, and yet leave + room for the recognition of that intellectual quality so peculiar to Mr. + Browning's verse. But what one member of the aesthetic school may express + with a certain reserve is proclaimed unreservedly by many more; and Mr. + Sharp must forgive me, if for the moment I regard him as one of these; and + if I oppose his arguments in the words of another poet and critic of + poetry, whose claim to the double title is I believe undisputed—Mr. + Roden Noel. I quote from an unpublished fragment of a published article on + Mr. Sharp's 'Life of Browning'. + </p> + <p> + 'Browning's message is an integral part of himself as writer; (whether as + poet, since we agree that he is a poet, were surely a too curious and vain + discussion;) but some of his finest things assuredly are the outcome of + certain very definite personal convictions. "The question," Mr. Sharp + says, "is not one of weighty message, but of artistic presentation." There + seems to be no true contrast here. "The primary concern of the artist must + be with his vehicle of expression"—no—not the primary concern. + Since the critic adds—(for a poet) "this vehicle is language + emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music by impassioned thought or + sensation." Exactly—"thought" it may be. Now part of this same + "thought" in Browning is the message. And therefore it is part of his + "primary concern". "It is with presentment," says Mr. Sharp, "that the + artist has fundamentally to concern himself." Granted: but it must surely + be presentment of <i>something</i>. . . . I do not understand how to + separate the substance from the form in true poetry. . . . If the message + be not well delivered, it does not constitute literature. But if it be + well delivered, the primary concern of the poet lay with the message after + all!' + </p> + <p> + More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the 'message' as + judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression or + exposition of a vivid a priori religious faith confirmed by positive + experience; and it reflects as such a double order of thought, in which + totally opposite mental activities are often forced into co-operation with + each other. Mr. Sharp says, this time quoting from Mr. Mortimer ('Scottish + Art Review', December 1889): + </p> + <p> + 'His position in regard to the thought of the age is paradoxical, if not + inconsistent. He is in advance of it in every respect but one, the most + important of all, the matter of fundamental principles; in these he is + behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific in their + precision of analysis; the sudden conclusion which he imposes upon them is + transcendental and inept.' + </p> + <p> + This statement is relatively true. Mr. Browning's positive reasonings + often do end with transcendental conclusions. They also start from + transcendental premises. However closely his mind might follow the visible + order of experience, he never lost what was for him the consciousness of a + Supreme Eternal Will as having existed before it; he never lost the vision + of an intelligent First Cause, as underlying all minor systems of + causation. But such weaknesses as were involved in his logical position + are inherent to all the higher forms of natural theology when once it has + been erected into a dogma. As maintained by Mr. Browning, this belief held + a saving clause, which removed it from all dogmatic, hence all admissible + grounds of controversy: the more definite or concrete conceptions of which + it consists possessed no finality for even his own mind; they represented + for him an absolute truth in contingent relations to it. No one felt more + strongly than he the contradictions involved in any conceivable system of + Divine creation and government. No one knew better that every act and + motive which we attribute to a Supreme Being is a virtual negation of His + existence. He believed nevertheless that such a Being exists; and he + accepted His reflection in the mirror of the human consciousness, as a + necessarily false image, but one which bears witness to the truth. + </p> + <p> + His works rarely indicate this condition of feeling; it was not often + apparent in his conversation. The faith which he had contingently accepted + became absolute for him from all practical points of view; it became + subject to all the conditions of his humanity. On the ground of abstract + logic he was always ready to disavow it; the transcendental imagination + and the acknowledged limits of human reason claimed the last word in its + behalf. This philosophy of religion is distinctly suggested in the fifth + parable of 'Ferishtah's Fancies'. + </p> + <p> + But even in defending what remains, from the most widely accepted point of + view, the validity of Mr. Browning's 'message', we concede the fact that + it is most powerful when conveyed in its least explicit form; for then + alone does it bear, with the full weight of his poetic utterance, on the + minds to which it is addressed. His challenge to Faith and Hope imposes + itself far less through any intellectual plea which he can advance in its + support, than through the unconscious testimony of all creative genius to + the marvel of conscious life; through the passionate affirmation of his + poetic and human nature, not only of the goodness and the beauty of that + life, but of its reality and its persistence. + </p> + <p> + We are told by Mr. Sharp that a new star appeared in Orion on the night on + which Robert Browning died. The alleged fact is disproved by the statement + of the Astronomer Royal, to whom it has been submitted; but it would have + been a beautiful symbol of translation, such as affectionate fancy might + gladly cherish if it were true. It is indeed true that on that twelfth of + December, a vivid centre of light and warmth was extinguished upon our + earth. The clouded brightness of many lives bears witness to the poet + spirit which has departed, the glowing human presence which has passed + away. We mourn the poet whom we have lost far less than we regret the man: + for he had done his appointed work; and that work remains to us. But the + two beings were in truth inseparable. The man is always present in the + poet; the poet was dominant in the man. This fact can never be absent from + our loving remembrance of him. No just estimate of his life and character + will fail to give it weight. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Index + </h2> + <p> + [The Index is included only as a rough guide to what is in this book. The + numbers in brackets indicate the number of index entries: as each + reference, short or long, is counted as one, the numbers may be misleading + if observed too closely.] + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +Abel, Mr. (musician) [1] +Adams, Mrs. Sarah Flower [2] +Albemarle, Lord [1] +Alford, Lady Marian [1] +Allingham, Mr. William [1] +American appreciation of Browning [1] +Ampere, M. [1] +Ancona [1] +Anderson, Mr. (actor) [1] +Arnold, Matthew [1] +Arnould, Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) [1] +Ashburton, Lady [1] +Asolo [4] +Associated Societies of Edinburgh, the [1] +Athenaeum, the (review of 'Pauline') [2] +Audierne (Finisterre, Brittany) [1] +Azeglio, Massimo d' [1] + +Balzac's works, the Brownings' admiration of [2] +Barrett, Miss Arabel [4] +Barrett, Miss Henrietta (afterwards Mrs. Surtees Cook [Altham]) [2] +Barrett, Mr. (the poet's father-in-law) [3] +Barrett, Mr. Laurence (actor) [1] +Bartoli's 'De' Simboli trasportati al Morale' [1] +Benckhausen, Mr. (Russian consul-general) [1] +Benzon, Mr. Ernest [1] +Beranger, M. [2] +Berdoe, Dr. Edward: his paper on 'Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine' [1] +Biarritz [1] +Blackwood's Magazine (on 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon') [1] +Blagden, Miss Isa [5] +Blundell, Dr. (physician) [1] +Boyle, Dean (Salisbury) [1] +Boyle, Miss (niece of the Earl of Cork) [2] +Bridell-Fox, Mrs. [3] +Bronson, Mrs. Arthur [5] +Browning, Robert (grandfather of the poet): account of his life, + two marriages, and two families [1] +Browning, Mrs. (step-grandmother of the poet) [2] +Browning, Robert (father of the poet): marriage; + clerk in the Bank of England; comparison between him and his son; + scholarly and artistic tastes; simplicity and genuineness of his character; + his strong health; Mr. Locker-Lampson's account of him; + his religious opinions; renewed relations with his father's widow + and second family; death [10] +Browning, Mrs. (the poet's mother): her family; her nervous temperament + transmitted to her son; her death [3] +Browning, Mr. Reuben (the poet's uncle), + (incl. Lord Beaconsfield's appreciation of his Latinity) [2] +Browning, Mr. William Shergold (the poet's uncle), + (incl. his literary work) [2] +Browning, Miss Jemima (the poet's aunt) [1] +Browning, Miss (the poet's sister), + (incl. comes to live with her brother) [16] +Browning, Robert: 1812-33--the notion of his Jewish extraction disproved; + his family anciently established in Dorsetshire; his carelessness + as to genealogical record; account of his grandfather's life + and second marriage; his father's unhappy youth; his paternal grandmother; + his father's position; comparison of father and son; + the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; + qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard to health + throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; + great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his mother; + fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; + extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance + with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in circulation; + 'Incondita', the production of the twelve-year-old poet; + introduction to Mr. Fox; his boyish love and lasting affection + for Miss Flower; first acquaintance with Shelley's and Keats' works; + his admiration for Shelley; home education under masters, + his manly accomplishments; his studies chiefly literary; love of home; + associates of his youth: Arnould and Domett; the Silverthornes; + his choice of poetry as a profession; other possible professions considered; + admiration for good acting; his father's support in his literary career; + reads and digests Johnson's Dictionary by way of preparation [37] +Browning, Robert: 1833-35--publication of 'Pauline'; + correspondence with Mr. Fox; the poet's later opinion of it; + characteristics of the poem; Mr. Fox's review of it; other notices; + Browning's visit to Russia; contributions to the 'Monthly Repository': + his first sonnet; the 'Trifler' (amateur periodical); + a comic defence of debt; preparing to publish 'Paracelsus'; friendship with + Count de Ripert-Monclar; Browning's treatment of 'Paracelsus'; + the original Preface; John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner' [16] +Browning, Robert: 1835-38--removal of the family to Hatcham; + renewed intimacy with his grandfather's second family; + friendly relations with Carlyle; recognition by men of the day; + introduction to Macready; first meeting with Forster; + Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth; at the 'Ion' supper; prospects of 'Strafford'; + its production and reception; a personal description of him at this period; + Mr. John Robertson and the 'Westminster Review' [11] +Browning, Robert: 1838-44--first Italian journey; a striking experience + of the voyage; preparations for writing other tragedies; + meeting with Mr. John Kenyon; appearance of 'Sordello'; + mental developments; 'Pippa Passes'; Alfred Domett on the critics; + 'Bells and Pomegranates'; explanation of its title. + List of the poems; 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', written for Macready; + Browning's later account and discussion of the breach between him + and Macready; 'Colombe's Birthday'; other dramas; The 'Dramatic Lyrics'; + 'The Lost Leader'; Browning's life before his second Italian journey; + in Naples; visit to Mr. Trelawney at Leghorn [19] +Browning, Robert: 1844-55--introduction to Miss Barrett; + his admiration for her poetry; his proposal to her; + reasons for concealing the engagement; their marriage; journey to Italy; + life at Pisa; Florence; Browning's request for appointment + on a British mission to the Vatican; settling in Casa Guidi; + Fano and Ancona; 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells; + birth of Browning's son, and death of his mother; wanderings in Italy: + the Baths of Lucca; Venice; friendship with Margaret Fuller Ossoli; + winter in Paris; Carlyle; George Sand. Close friendship + with M. Joseph Milsand; Milsand's appreciation of Browning; + new edition of Browning's poems; 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; + the Essay on Shelley; summer in London; introduction to Dante G. Rossetti; + again in Florence; production of 'Colombe's Birthday' (1853); + again at Lucca, Mr. and Mrs. W. Story; first winter in Rome; the Kembles; + again in London (1855): Tennyson, Ruskin [32] +Browning, Robert: 1855-61--publication of 'Men and Women'; + 'Karshook'; 'Two in the Campagna'; another winter in Paris: Lady Elgin; + legacies to the Brownings from Mr. Kenyon; Mr. Browning's little son; + a carnival masquerade; Spiritualism; 'Sludge the Medium'; + Count Ginnasi's clairvoyance; at Siena; Walter Savage Landor; + illness of Mrs. Browning; American appreciation of Browning's works; + his social life in Rome; last winter in Rome; Madame du Quaire; + Mrs. Browning's illness and death; the comet of 1861 [18] +Browning, Robert: 1861-69--Miss Blagden's helpful sympathy; + journey to England; feeling in regard to funeral ceremonies; + established in London with his son; Miss Arabel Barrett; + visit to Biarritz; origin of 'The Ring and the Book'; + his views as to the publication of letters; new edition of his works, + selection of poems. Residence at Pornic; a meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's; + his literary position in 1865; his own estimate of it; + death of his father; with his sister at Le Croisic; + Academic honours: letter to the Master of Balliol (Dr. Scott); + curious circumstance connected with the death of Miss A. Barrett; + at Audierne; the uniform edition of his works; publication of + 'The Ring and the Book'; inspiration of Pompilia [21] +Browning, Robert: 1869-73--'Helen's Tower'; at St.-Aubin; + escape from France during the war (1870); publication of + 'Balaustion's Adventure' and 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'; + 'Herve Riel' sold for the benefit of French sufferers by the war; + 'Fifine at the Fair'; mistaken theories of that work; + 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [8] +Browning, Robert: 1873-78--his manner of life in London; + his love of music; friendship with Miss Egerton-Smith; + summers spent at Mers, Villers, Isle of Arran, and La Saisiaz; + 'Aristophanes' Apology'; 'Pacchiarotto', 'The Inn Album', + the translation of the 'Agamemnon'; description of a visit to Oxford; + visit to Cambridge; offered the Rectorships of the Universities + of Glasgow and St. Andrews; description of La Saisiaz; + sudden death of Miss Egerton-Smith; the poem 'La Saisiaz': + Browning's position towards Christianity; 'The Two Poets of Croisic', + and Selections from his Works [13] +Browning, Robert: 1878-81--he revisits Italy; Spluegen; + Asolo; Venice; favourite Alpine retreats; friendly relations + with Mrs. Arthur Bronson; life in Venice; a tragedy at Saint-Pierre; + the first series of 'Dramatic Idyls'; the second series, + 'Jocoseria', and 'Ferishtah's Fancies' [10] +Browning, Robert: 1881-87--the Browning Society; Browning's attitude + in regard to it; similar societies in England and America; + wide diffusion of Browning's works in America; lines for the gravestone + of Mr. Levi Thaxter; President of the New Shakspere Society, + and member of the Wordsworth Society; Honorary President of + the Associated Societies of Edinburgh; appreciation of his works in Italy; + sonnet to Goldoni; attempt to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, Venice; + Saint-Moritz; Mrs. Bloomfield Moore; at Llangollen; loss of old friends; + Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academy; publication of 'Parleyings' [15] +Browning, Robert: his character--constancy in friendship; + optimism and belief in a direct Providence; political principles; + character of his friendships; attitude towards his reviewers + and his readers; attitude towards his works; his method of work; + study of Spanish, Hebrew, and German; conversational powers + and the stores of his memory; nervous peculiarities; his innate kindliness; + attitude towards women; final views on the Women's Suffrage question [13] +Browning, Robert: his last years--marriage of his son; + his change of abode; symptoms of declining strength; + new poems, and revision of the old; journey to Italy: Primiero and Venice; + last winter in England: visit to Balliol College; + last visit to Italy: Asolo once more; proposed purchase of land there; + the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald'; with his son at Palazzo Rezzonico; + last illness; death; funeral honours in Italy; 'Asolando' published + on the day of his death; his burial in Westminster Abbey; + the purport and tendency of his work [16] +Browning, Robert: letters to-- Bainton, Mr. George (Coventry) [1] + Blagden, Miss Isa [12] + Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [8] + Flower, Miss [2] + Fox, Mr. [4] + Haworth, Miss E. F. [3] + Hickey, Miss E. H. [1] + Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the 'Daily News') [2] + Hill, Mrs. Frank [1] + Keep, Miss [3] + Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [5] + Lee, Miss (Maidstone) [1] + Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [4] + Martin, Mrs. Theodore (afterwards Lady) [2] + Moulton-Barrett, Mr. G. [2] + Quaire, Madame du [1] + Robertson, Mr. John (editor of 'Westminster Review', 1838) [1] + Scott, Rev. Dr. [1] + Skirrow, Mrs. Charles [4] + Smith, Mr. G. M. [3] +Browning, Robert: Works of-- 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' [2] + 'A Death in the Desert' [2] + 'Agamemnon' [1] + 'Andrea del Sarto' [1] + 'Aristophanes' Apology' [1] + 'Artemis Prologuizes' [1] + 'Asolando' [5] + 'At the Mermaid' [2] + 'A Woman's Last Word' [1] + 'Bad Dreams' [1] + 'Balaustion's Adventure' [3] + 'Bean Stripes' [1] + 'Beatrice Signorini' [1] + 'Bells and Pomegranates' (incl. meaning of the title, + and list of the dramas and poems) [7] + 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom' [1] + 'Bishop Blougram' [1] + 'By the Fireside' [1] + 'Childe Roland' [1] + 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day' [2] + 'Cleon' [1] + 'Colombe's Birthday' [4] + 'Crescentius, the Pope's Legate' [1] + 'Cristina' [1] + 'Dramatic Idyls' [4] + 'Dramatic Lyrics' [1] + 'Dramatis Personae' [5] + 'Essay on Shelley' [1] + 'Ferishtah's Fancies' [2] + 'Fifine at the Fair' [2] + 'Flute-Music' [1] + 'Goldoni', sonnet to [1] + 'Helen's Tower' (sonnet) [1] + 'Herve Riel' (ballad) [2] + 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' [1] + 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' [1] + 'In a Balcony' [2] + 'In a Gondola' [2] + 'Ivan Ivanovitch' [3] + 'James Lee's Wife' [3] + 'Jocoseria' [1] + 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' [1] + 'King Victor and King Charles' [3] + 'La Saisiaz' [4] + 'Luria' [1] + 'Madhouse Cells' [1] + 'Martin Relph' [1] + 'May and Death' [1] + 'Men and Women' [3] + 'Ned Bratts' [1] + 'Numpholeptos' [1] + 'One Word More' [2] + 'Pacchiarotto' [3] + 'Paracelsus' [8] + 'Parleyings' [2] + 'Pauline' [10] + 'Pippa Passes' (incl. the Preface to) [5] + 'Ponte dell' Angelo' [1] + 'Porphyria's Lover' [1] + 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' [3] + 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [3] + 'Rosny' [1] + 'Saint Martin's Summer' [1] + 'Saul' [1] + 'Sludge the Medium' [2] + 'Sordello' [7] + 'Strafford' [3] + 'The Epistle of Karshish' [1] + 'The Flight of the Duchess' [1] + 'The Inn Album' [3] + 'The Lost Leader' [1] + 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' [1] + 'The Return of the Druses' [3] + 'The Ring and the Book' [3] + 'The Two Poets of Croisic' [2] + 'The Worst of It' [1] + 'Two in the Campagna' [1] + 'White Witchcraft' [1] + 'Why I am a Liberal' (sonnet) [2] + 'Women and Roses' [1] +Browning, Mrs. (the poet's wife: Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett): + Browning's introduction to her; her ill health; + the reasons for their secret marriage; causes of her ill health; + happiness of her married life; estrangement from her father; + her visit to Mrs. Theodore Martin; 'Aurora Leigh': her methods of work; + a legacy from Mr. Kenyon; her feeling about Spiritualism; + success of 'Aurora Leigh'; her sister's illness and death; + her own death; proposed reinterment in Westminster Abbey [14] +Browning, Mrs.: extracts from her letters--on her husband's devotion; + life in Pisa, and on French literature; Vallombrosa; their acquaintances + in Florence; their dwelling in Piazza Pitti; 'Father Prout's' cure + for a sore throat; apartments in the Casa Guidi; visits to Fano and Ancona; + Phelps's production of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; + birth of her son; the effect of his mother's death on her husband; + wanderings in northern Italy; the neighbourhood of Lucca; + Venice; life in Paris (1851); esteem for her husband's family; + description of George Sand; the personal appearance of that lady; + her impression of M. Joseph Milsand; the first performance + of 'Colombe's Birthday' (1853); Rome: death in the Story family; + Mrs. Sartoris and the Kembles; society in Rome; a visit to Mr. Ruskin; + about 'Penini'; description of a carnival masquerade (Florence, 1857); + impressions of Landor; tribute to the unselfish character + of her father-in-law; on her husband's work; on the contrast + of his (then) appreciation in England and America; + Massimo d' Azeglio; on her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook); + on the death of Count Cavour [34] +Browning, Mr. Robert Wiedemann Barrett (the poet's son): his birth; + incidents of his childhood; his pet-name--Penini, Peni, Pen; + in charge of Miss Isa Blagden on his mother's death; + taken to England by his father; manner of his education; + studying art in Antwerp; with his father in Venice (1885); his marriage; + purchase of the Rezzonico Palace (Venice); death of his father there [14] +Browning, Mrs. R. Barrett [2] +Browning, Mr. Robert Jardine (Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales) [1] +Browning Society, the: its establishment [1] +Brownlow, Lord [1] +Bruce, Lady Augusta [1] +Bruce, Lady Charlotte (wife of Mr. F. Locker) [1] +Buckstone, Mr. (actor) [1] +Buloz, M. [1] +Burne Jones, Mr. [2] +Burns, Major (son of the poet) [1] + +Californian Railway time-table edition of Browning's poems [1] +Cambo [1] +Cambridge, Browning's visit to [1] +Campbell Dykes, Mr. J. [6] +Carducci, Countess (Rome) [1] +Carlyle, Mr. Thomas [6] +Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas (incl. anecdote) [2] +Carnarvon, Lord [1] +Carnival masquerade, a [1] +Cartwright, Mr. and Mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3] +Casa Guidi (Browning's residence at Florence) [2] +Cattermole, Mr. [1] +Cavour, Count, death of [1] +Channel, Mr. (afterwards Sir William), and Frank [1] +Chapman & Hall, Messrs. (publishers) [2] +Cholmondeley, Mr. (Condover) [3] +Chorley, Mr. [1] +Cini, Dr. (Venice) [1] +Clairvoyance, an instance of [1] +Coddington, Miss Fannie (afterwards Mrs. R. Barrett Browning) [1] +Colvin, Mr. Sidney [1] +Corkran, Mrs. Fraser [2] +Cornaro, Catharine [3] +Cornhill Magazine: why 'Herve Riel' appeared in it [2] +Corson, Professor [1] +Crosse, Mrs. Andrew [1] +'Croxall's Fables', Browning's early fondness for [1] +Curtis, Mr. [1] + +Dale, Mr. (actor) [1] +Davidson, Captain (of the 'Norham Castle', 1838) [2] +Davies, Rev. Llewellyn [1] +Debt, Browning's mock defence of (in the 'Trifler') [1] +Dickens, Charles [5] +Domett, Alfred (incl. 'On a certain Critique of Pippa Passes') [3] +Dourlans, M. Gustave [1] +Doyle, Sir Francis H. [1] +Dufferin, Lord [1] +Dulwich Gallery [1] + +Eclectic Review, the (review of Browning's works) [1] +Eden, Mr. Frederic [1] +Egerton-Smith, Miss [2] +Elgin, Lady [3] +Elstree (Macready's residence) [2] +Elton, Mr. (actor) [1] +Engadine, the [2] +Examiner (review of 'Paracelsus') [1] + +Fano [1] +'Father Prout' (Mr. Mahoney) [1] +Faucit, Miss Helen--as Lady Carlisle in 'Strafford'; as Mildred + in 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; as Colombe in 'Colombe's Birthday' [3] +Fiori, Margherita (Browning's nurse) [1] +Fisher, Mr. (artist) [1] +Fitzgerald, Mr. Edward [1] +Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [1] +Florence [6] +Flower, Miss [5] +Flower, Mr. Benjamin (editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer') [1] +Fontainebleau [1] +Forster, Mr. John [11] +Fortia, Marquis de [1] +Fox, Miss Caroline [1] +Fox, Miss Sarah [1] +Fox, Mr. W. J. (incl. election for Oldham) [10] +Furnivall, Dr. [5] + +Gaisford, Mr., and Lady Alice [1] +Galuppi, Baldassaro [1] +Gibraltar [1] +Ginnasi, Count (Ravenna) [1] +Giustiniani-Recanati, Palazzo (Venice) [1] +Gladstone, Mr. [1] +Glasgow, University of [1] +Goldoni, Browning's sonnet to [1] +Goltz, M. (Austrian Minister at Rome) [1] +Gosse's 'Personalia' [4] +Green, Mr. [1] +Gressoney Saint-Jean [1] +Guerande (Brittany) [1] +Guidi Palace (Casa Guidi) [1] +Gurney, Rev. Archer [1] + +Hanmer, Sir John (afterwards Lord Hanmer) [1] +Haworth, Miss Euphrasia Fanny [2] +Haworth, Mr. Frederick [1] +Hawthorne, Nathaniel [1] +Hazlitt, Mr. [1] +Heyermans, M. (artist; Antwerp) [1] +Hickey, Miss E. H. [2] +Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the 'Daily News', 1884) [1] +Hood, Mr. Thomas [1] +Horne, Mr. [1] +Hugo, Victor [1] + +Ion, the Ion supper [1] + +Jameson, Mrs. Anna [1] +Jebb-Dyke, Mrs. [1] +Jerningham, Miss [1] +Jersey [1] +Jewsbury, Miss Geraldine [1] +Joachim, Professor [1] +Jones, Mr. Edward Burne [1] +Jones, Rev. Thomas [1] +Jowett, Dr. [3] + +Kean, Mr. Edmund [1] +Keats [1] +Keepsake, The [1] +Kemble, Mrs. Fanny [1] +Kenyon, Mr. John [5] +King, Mr. Joseph [1] +Kirkup, Mr. [2] +Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [2] + +Lamartine, M. de [1] +Lamb, Charles [1] +Landor, Walter Savage [5] +La Saisiaz [2] +Layard, Sir Henry and Lady [2] +Le Croisic (Brittany) [1] +Leigh Hunt [1] +Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [2] +'Les Charmettes' (Chambery: Rousseau's residence) [1] +Le Strange, Mrs. Guy [1] +Lewis, Miss (Harpton) [1] +Literary Gazette (review of 'Pauline') [1] +Literary World, the Boston, U.S. (on 'Colombe's Birthday') [1] +Llangollen [2] +Llantysilio Church [1] +Lloyd, Captain [1] +Locker, Mr. F. (now Mr. Locker-Lampson) [2] +Lockhart [1] +Lucca [4] +Lyons, Mr. (son of Sir Edmund) [1] +Lytton, Mr. (now Lord) [3] + +Maclise, Mr. (artist) [2] +Macready, Mr. [5] +Macready, Willy (eldest son of the actor): his illustrations + to the 'Pied Piper' [1] +Mahoney, Rev. Francis ('Father Prout') [1] +Manning, Rev. Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) [1] +Manzoni Palace (Venice) [1] +Martin, Lady [3] +Martin, Sir Theodore [1] +Martineau, Miss [4] +Mazzini, Signor [1] +Melvill, Rev. H. (afterwards Canon) [2] +Meredith, Mr. George [1] +Mill, Mr. J. S. [3] +Milnes, Mr. Monckton (afterwards Lord Houghton) [4] +Milsand, M. Joseph [4] +Minich, Dr. (Venice) [1] +Mitford, Miss [3] +Mocenigo, Countess (Venice) [1] +Mohl, Madame [2] +Monthly Repository (incl. Browning's contributions to) [4] +Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield [2] +Morgan, Lady [1] +Morison, Mr. James Cotter [1] +Mortimer, Mr. [2] +Moulton-Barrett, Mr. George [3] +Moxon, Mr. (publisher) [4] +Murray, Miss Alma (actress) [1] +Musset, Alfred and Paul de [1] + +Naples [1] +National Magazine, the: Mrs. Browning's portrait in (1859) [1] +Nencioni, Professor (Florence) [1] +Nettleship, Mr. J. T. [1] +New Shakspere Society [1] +Noel, Mr. Roden [1] + +Ogle, Dr. John [1] +Ogle, Miss (author of 'A Lost Love') [1] +Osbaldistone, Mr. (manager of Covent Garden Theatre, 1836) [1] +Ossoli, Countess Margaret Fuller [1] +Oxford (incl. Browning's visit to, 1877) [2] + +Palgrave, Mr. Francis [1] +Palgrave, Mr. Reginald [1] +Paris [2] +Patterson, Monsignor [1] +Phelps, Mr. (actor) [3] +Pirate-ship, wreck of [1] +Pisa [1] +Poetical contest, a Roman [1] +Pollock, Sir Frederick (1843) [1] +Pornic [2] +Powell, Mr. Thomas [2] +Power, Miss (editor of 'The Keepsake') [1] +Powers, Mr. (American sculptor) [1] +Primiero [1] +Prinsep, Mr. Val [6] +Pritchard, Captain [1] +Procter, Mr. Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall) [4] + +Quaire, Madame du [2] +Quarles' Emblemes [1] + +Ravenna [1] +Ready, the two Misses, preparatory school [3] +Ready, Rev. Thomas (Browning's first schoolmaster) [2] +Regan, Miss [1] +Reid, Mr. Andrew [1] +Relfe, Mr. John (musician) [1] +Rezzonico Palace (Venice), the [2] +Richmond, Rev. Thomas [1] +Ripert-Monclar, Count de [4] +Robertson, Mr. John (editor of 'Westminster Review', 1838) [1] +Robinson, Miss Mary (now Mrs. James Darmesteter) [1] +Rome [2] +Rossetti, Mr. Dante Gabriel (incl. death of his wife) [4] +Ruskin, Mr. [1] +Russell, Lady William [1] +Russell, Mr. Odo (afterwards Lord Ampthill) [2] + +Sabatier, Madame [1] +Saleve, the [2] +Sand, George [2] +Sartoris, Mrs. [4] +Saunders & Otley, Messrs. [2] +Scott, Rev. Dr. (Master of Balliol, 1867) [1] +Scotti, Mr. [1] +Scottish Art Review, the, Mr. Mortimer's 'Note on Browning' in [1] +Seraverra [1] +Sharp, Mr. [4] +Shelley (incl. Browning's Essay on; his grave) [4] +Shrewsbury, Lord [1] +Sidgwick, Mr. A. [1] +Siena [2] +Silverthorne, Mrs. [2] +Simeon, Sir John [1] +Smith, Miss (second wife of the poet's grandfather) [1] +Smith, Mr. George Murray [1] +Southey [1] +Spezzia [1] +Spiritualism (incl. a pretending medium) [2] +Spluegen [1] +St. Andrews University [1] +St.-Aubin (M. Milsand's residence) [2] +St.-Enogat (near Dinard) [1] +St.-Pierre la Chartreuse (incl. a tragic occurrence there) [2] +Stanley, Dean [1] +Stanley, Lady Augusta [1] +Stendhal, Henri [2] +Sterling, Mr. John [1] +Stirling, Mrs. (actress) [1] +Story, Mr. and Mrs. William [7] +Sturtevant, Miss [1] +Sue, Eugene [1] + +Tablets, Memorial [3] +Tait's Magazine [1] +Talfourd, Serjeant [3] +Taylor, Sir Henry [1] +Tennyson, Mr. Alfred (afterwards Lord Tennyson) [2] +Tennyson, Mr. Frederick [1] +Thackeray, Miss Annie [1] +Thackeray, Mr. W. M. [2] +Thaxter, Mrs. (Celia) (Boston, U.S.) [1] +Thaxter, Mr. Levi (Boston, U.S.) [1] +Thomson, Mr. James: his application of the term 'Gothic' + to Browning's work [1] +Tittle, Miss Margaret [1] +Trelawney, Mr. E. J. (1844) [1] +Trifler, The (amateur magazine) [1] +True Sun, the (review of 'Strafford') [1] + +Universo, Hotel dell' (Venice) [1] + +Vallombrosa [1] +Venice [6] +Vigna, Dr. da (Venice) [1] + +Wagner [1] +Warburton, Mr. Eliot [1] +Watts, Dr. [1] +Westminster, Dean of [2] +Widman, Counts [1] +Wiedemann, Mr. William [1] +Williams, Rev. J. D. W. (vicar of Bottisham, Cambs.) [1] +Wilson (Mrs. Browning's maid) [6] +Wilson, Mr. Effingham (publisher) [1] +Wiseman, Mrs. (mother of Cardinal Wiseman) [1] +Wolseley, Lady [1] +Wolseley, Lord [1] +Woolner, Mr. [1] +Wordsworth [3] +Wordsworth Society, the [2] + +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by +Mrs. Sutherland Orr + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT *** + +***** This file should be named 655-h.htm or 655-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/5/655/ + +Produced by Alan Light and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life and Letters of Robert Browning + +Author: Mrs. Sutherland Orr + +Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #655] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT *** + + + + +Produced by Alan Light and David Widger + + + + + + +LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING + +by Mrs. Sutherland Orr + + +Second Edition + + + + +Preface + + +Such letters of Mr. Browning's as appear, whole or in part, in the +present volume have been in most cases given to me by the persons to +whom they were addressed, or copied by Miss Browning from the originals +under her care; but I owe to the daughter of the Rev. W. J. Fox--Mrs. +Bridell Fox--those written to her father and to Miss Flower; the two +interesting extracts from her father's correspondence with herself and +Mr. Browning's note to Mr. Robertson. + +For my general material I have been largely indebted to Miss Browning. +Her memory was the only existing record of her brother's boyhood and +youth. It has been to me an unfailing as well as always accessible +authority for that subsequent period of his life which I could only know +in disconnected facts or his own fragmentary reminiscences. It is less +true, indeed, to say that she has greatly helped me in writing this +short biography than that without her help it could never have been +undertaken. + +I thank my friends Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell and Miss Hickey for their +invaluable assistance in preparing the book for, and carrying it through +the press; and I acknowledge with real gratitude the advantages derived +by it from Mr. Dykes Campbell's large literary experience in his very +careful final revision of the proofs. + +A. Orr. April 22, 1891. + + + + + + +Contents + + + +Chapter 1 Origin of the Browning Family--Robert Browning's +Grandfather--His position and Character--His first and second +Marriage--Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's +Father--Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's +Grandmother--Existing Evidence against it--The Grandmother's Portrait. + +Chapter 2 Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparison +between him and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of his +Habits and Character--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letter +of Mr. Locker--Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character and +Antecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy imparted to +both her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son. + +Chapter 3 1812-1826 Birth of Robert Browning--His Childhood +and Schooldays--Restless Temperament--Brilliant Mental +Endowments--Incidental Peculiarities--Strong Religious +Feeling--Passionate Attachment to his Mother; Grief at first +Separation--Fondness for Animals--Experiences of School Life--Extensive +Reading--Early Attempts in Verse--Letter from his Father concerning +them--Spurious Poems in Circulation--'Incondita'--Mr. Fox--Miss Flower. + +Chapter 4 1826-1833 First Impressions of Keats and Shelley--Prolonged +Influence of Shelley--Details of Home Education--Its Effects--Youthful +Restlessness--Counteracting Love of Home--Early Friendships: Alfred +Domett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes--Choice of Poetry as a +Profession--Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning +them--Interest in Art--Love of good Theatrical Performances--Talent for +Acting--Final Preparation for Literary Life. + +Chapter 5 1833-1835 'Pauline'--Letters to Mr. Fox--Publication of the +Poem; chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics--Mr. Fox's Review +in the 'Monthly Repository'; other Notices--Russian Journey--Desired +diplomatic Appointment--Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of +Appearance--'The Trifler'--M. de Ripert-Monclar--'Paracelsus'--Letters +to Mr. Fox concerning it; its Publication--Incidental Origin of +'Paracelsus'; its inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'--Mr. Fox's +Review of it in the 'Monthly Repository'--Article in the 'Examiner' by +John Forster. + +Chapter 6 1835-1838 Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars--Renewed +Intercourse with the second Family of Robert Browning's +Grandfather--Reuben Browning--William Shergold Browning--Visitors +at Hatcham--Thomas Carlyle--Social Life--New Friends and +Acquaintance--Introduction to Macready--New Year's Eve at Elm +Place--Introduction to John Forster--Miss Fanny Haworth--Miss +Martineau--Serjeant Talfourd--The 'Ion' Supper--'Strafford'--Relations +with Macready--Performance of 'Strafford'--Letters concerning it +from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower--Personal Glimpses of Robert +Browning--Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration--Relation of 'Strafford' +to 'Sordello'--Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'. + +Chapter 7 1838-1841 First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr. +John Kenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bells +and Pomegranates'. + +Chapter 8 1841-1844 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'--Letters to Mr. +Frank Hill; Lady Martin--Charles Dickens--Other Dramas and Minor +Poems--Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower--Second Italian +Journey; Naples--E. J. Trelawney--Stendhal. + +Chapter 9 1844-1849 Introduction to Miss Barrett--Engagement--Motives +for Secrecy--Marriage--Journey to Italy--Extract of Letter from +Mr. Fox--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford--Life at +Pisa--Vallombrosa--Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle--Proposed British +Mission to the Vatican--Father Prout--Palazzo Guidi--Fano; Ancona--'A +Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. + +Chapter 10 1849-1852 Death of Mr. Browning's Mother--Birth of his +Son--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Baths of Lucca--Florence +again--Venice--Margaret Fuller Ossoli--Visit to England--Winter in +Paris--Carlyle--George Sand--Alfred de Musset. + +Chapter 11 1852-1855 M. Joseph Milsand--His close Friendship with +Mr. Browning; Mrs. Browning's Impression of him--New Edition of +Mr. Browning's Poems--'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'--'Essay' on +Shelley--Summer in London--Dante Gabriel Rossetti--Florence; secluded +Life--Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Browning--'Colombe's Birthday'--Baths of +Lucca--Mrs. Browning's Letters--Winter in Rome--Mr. and Mrs. Story--Mrs. +Sartoris--Mrs. Fanny Kemble--Summer in London--Tennyson--Ruskin. + +Chapter 12 1855-1858 'Men and Women'--'Karshook'--'Two in the +Campagna'--Winter in Paris; Lady Elgin--'Aurora Leigh'--Death of +Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett--Penini--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss +Browning--The Florentine Carnival--Baths of Lucca--Spiritualism--Mr. +Kirkup; Count Ginnasi--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox--Havre. + +Chapter 13 1858-1861 Mrs. Browning's Illness--Siena--Letter from Mr. +Browning to Mr. Leighton--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Walter +Savage Landor--Winter in Rome--Mr. Val Prinsep--Friends in Rome: Mr. and +Mrs. Cartwright--Multiplying Social Relations--Massimo d'Azeglio--Siena +again--Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister--Mr. Browning's +Occupations--Madame du Quaire--Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death. + +Chapter 14 1861-1863 Miss Blagden--Letters from Mr. Browning to +Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton--His Feeling in regard to Funeral +Ceremonies--Establishment in London--Plan of Life--Letter to Madame +du Quaire--Miss Arabel Barrett--Biarritz--Letters to Miss +Blagden--Conception of 'The Ring and the Book'--Biographical +Indiscretion--New Edition of his Works--Mr. and Mrs. Procter. + +Chapter 15 1863-1869 Pornic--'James Lee's Wife'--Meeting at Mr. F. +Palgrave's--Letters to Miss Blagden--His own Estimate of his Work--His +Father's Illness and Death; Miss Browning--Le Croisic--Academic +Honours; Letter to the Master of Balliol--Death of Miss +Barrett--Audierne--Uniform Edition of his Works--His rising +Fame--'Dramatis Personae'--'The Ring and the Book'; Character of +Pompilia. + +Chapter 16 1869-1873 Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower--Scotland; Visit to +Lady Ashburton--Letters to Miss Blagden--St.-Aubin; The Franco-Prussian +War--'Herve Riel'--Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith--'Balaustion's Adventure'; +'Prince Hohenstiel--Schwangau'--'Fifine at the Fair'--Mistaken Theories +of Mr. Browning's Work--St.-Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. + +Chapter 17 1873-1878 London Life--Love of Music--Miss +Egerton-Smith--Periodical Nervous Exhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes' +Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'The Inn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and other +Poems'--Visits to Oxford and Cambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St. +Andrews; Letter from Professor Knight--In the Savoyard +Mountains--Death of Miss Egerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of +Croisic'--Selections from his Works. + +Chapter 18 1878-1884 He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. +Fitz-Gerald--Venice--Favourite Alpine Retreats--Mrs. Arthur +Bronson--Life in Venice--A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre--Mr. +Cholmondeley--Mr. Browning's Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter +to Mrs. Charles Skirrow--'Dramatic Idyls'--'Jocoseria'--'Ferishtah's +Fancies'. + +Chapter 19 1881-1887 The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. +H. Hickey--His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. +Fitz-Gerald--Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter--Letter to Miss Hickey; +'Strafford'--Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies--Letters to Professor +Knight--Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni--The Goldoni +Sonnet--Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni--Letters to Mrs. Charles +Skirrow--Mrs. Bloomfield Moore--Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady +Martin--Loss of old Friends--Foreign Correspondent of the Royal +Academy--'Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day'. + +Chapter 20 Constancy to Habit--Optimism--Belief in Providence--Political +Opinions--His Friendships--Reverence for Genius--Attitude towards +his Public--Attitude towards his Work--Habits of Work--His +Reading--Conversational Powers--Impulsiveness and Reserve--Nervous +Peculiarities--His Benevolence--His Attitude towards Women. + +Chapter 21 1887-1889 Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning--Removal to De +Vere Gardens--Symptoms of failing Strength--New Poems; New Edition +of his Works--Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady +Martin--Primiero and Venice--Letters to Miss Keep--The last Year in +London--Asolo--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. +Smith. + +Chapter 22 1889 Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo--Venice--Letter +to Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett--Lines in the 'Athenaeum'--Letter to Miss +Keep--Illness--Death--Funeral Ceremonial at Venice--Publication of +'Asolando'--Interment in Poets' Corner. + +Conclusion + +Index + + +Portrait of Robert Browning (1889) Mr. Browning's Study in De Vere +Gardens + + + + + +LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING + + + + + +Chapter 1 + +Origin of the Browning Family--Robert Browning's Grandfather--His +position and Character--His first and second Marriage--Unkindness +towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father--Alleged Infusion +of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother--Existing +Evidence against it--The Grandmother's Portrait. + + + +A belief was current in Mr. Browning's lifetime that he had Jewish blood +in his veins. It received outward support from certain accidents of his +life, from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature, +from his friendship for various members of the Jewish community in +London. It might well have yielded to the fact of his never claiming the +kinship, which could not have existed without his knowledge, and which, +if he had known it, he would, by reason of these very sympathies, have +been the last person to disavow. The results of more recent and more +systematic inquiry have shown the belief to be unfounded. + +Our poet sprang, on the father's side, from an obscure or, as family +tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock settled, +at an early period of our history, in the south, and probably also +south-west, of England. A line of Brownings owned the manors of +Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond, in north-west Dorsetshire; their +last representative disappeared--or was believed to do so--in the time +of Henry VII., their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of +Ilchester, who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different +parts of the country: in two cases with the affix of 'esquire', in two +also, though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge, +where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear. Its cradle, +as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge, on the +Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors, of the third +and fourth generations, held, as we understand, a modest but independent +social position. + + * I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others + referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles, + to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall. + +This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better with our +impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree which more +palpably connected him with the 'knightly' and 'squirely' families whose +name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life +to which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that +genius and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense, +the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements which +entered into its growth were racial as well as cultural, and inherited +as well as absorbed, the evidence of its strong natural or physical +basis remains undisturbed. + +Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in the +matter. He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical +past which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of +his family. He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to him +from his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to do +so, a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle, in +years gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason to think +about his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason to care +about them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case, the most +important fact in his family history. + + Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi, + Suis le seigneur de Conti, + +he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally questioned +him about it. + +Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning's +grandfather, also a Robert Browning, who obtained through Lord +Shaftesbury's influence a clerkship in the Bank of England, and entered +on it when barely twenty, in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose to +the position of Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an important +one, and which brought him into contact with the leading financiers +of the day. He became also a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery +Company, and took part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riots +of 1789. He was an able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman, very +much of the provincial type; his literary tastes being limited to the +Bible and 'Tom Jones', both of which he is said to have read through +once a year. He possessed a handsome person and, probably, a vigorous +constitution, since he lived to the age of eighty-four, though +frequently tormented by gout; a circumstance which may help to account +for his not having seen much of his grandchildren, the poet and his +sister; we are indeed told that he particularly dreaded the lively boy's +vicinity to his afflicted foot. He married, in 1778, Margaret, daughter +of a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with Miss Seymour; and who was born +in the West Indies and had inherited property there. They had three +children: Robert, the poet's father; a daughter, who lived an uneventful +life and plays no part in the family history; and another son who died +an infant. The Creole mother died also when her eldest boy was only +seven years old, and passed out of his memory in all but an indistinct +impression of having seen her lying in her coffin. Five years later the +widower married a Miss Smith, who gave him a large family. + +This second marriage of Mr. Browning's was a critical event in the life +of his eldest son; it gave him, to all appearance, two step-parents +instead of one. There could have been little sympathy between his father +and himself, for no two persons were ever more unlike, but there was yet +another cause for the systematic unkindness under which the lad grew +up. Mr. Browning fell, as a hard man easily does, greatly under the +influence of his second wife, and this influence was made by her +to subserve the interests of a more than natural jealousy of her +predecessor. An early instance of this was her banishing the dead lady's +portrait to a garret, on the plea that her husband did not need two +wives. The son could be no burden upon her because he had a little +income, derived from his mother's brother; but this, probably, only +heightened her ill-will towards him. When he was old enough to go to a +University, and very desirous of going--when, moreover, he offered to +do so at his own cost--she induced his father to forbid it, because, +she urged, they could not afford to send their other sons to college. An +earlier ambition of his had been to become an artist; but when he showed +his first completed picture to his father, the latter turned away and +refused to look at it. He gave himself the finishing stroke in the +parental eyes, by throwing up a lucrative employment which he had held +for a short time on his mother's West Indian property, in disgust at the +system of slave labour which was still in force there; and he paid for +this unpractical conduct as soon as he was of age, by the compulsory +reimbursement of all the expenses which his father, up to that date, had +incurred for him; and by the loss of his mother's fortune, which, at the +time of her marriage, had not been settled upon her. It was probably +in despair of doing anything better, that, soon after this, in his +twenty-second year, he also became a clerk in the Bank of England. He +married and settled in Camberwell, in 1811; his son and daughter were +born, respectively, in 1812 and 1814. He became a widower in 1849; and +when, four years later, he had completed his term of service at the +Bank, he went with his daughter to Paris, where they resided until his +death in 1866. + +Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a conviction, +that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole in the strict +sense of the term, that of a person born of white parents in the West +Indies, and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood passed from her to +her son and grandson. Such an occurrence was, on the face of it, not +impossible, and would be absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I think +I may add, to that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and his +father were what we know them, and if negro blood had any part in their +composition, it was no worse for them, and so much the better for the +negro. But many persons among us are very averse to the idea of such +a cross; I believe its assertion, in the present case, to be entirely +mistaken; I prefer, therefore, touching on the facts alleged in favour +of it, to passing them over in a silence which might be taken to mean +indifference, but might also be interpreted into assent. + +We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life, that a nephew +who saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian. He neither +had nor could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England at the +time specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior was residing on +his mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, his appearance was held +to justify his being placed in church among the coloured members of the +congregation. We are assured in the strongest terms that the story has +no foundation, and this by a gentleman whose authority in all matters +concerning the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise accepted +as conclusive. If the anecdote were true it would be a singular +circumstance that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing negro +heads, and thus obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association with +them. + +I do not know the exact physical indications by which a dark strain is +perceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes, hair, +and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons who in +the present case are supposed to have borne them. The poet's father had +light blue eyes and, I am assured by those who knew him best, a clear, +ruddy complexion. His appearance induced strangers passing him in the +Paris streets to remark, 'C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whiteness +of Miss Browning's skin was modified in her brother by a sallow tinge +sufficiently explained by frequent disturbance of the liver; but it +never affected the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair, +which grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black, +is spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth, +as golden. It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his early +friend Mr. Fox, who grew up in the little social circle to which he +belonged, never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him; and a +lady who made his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year, wrote a +sonnet upon him, beginning with these words: + + Thy brow is calm, young Poet--pale and clear + As a moonlighted statue. + +The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve, +however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on the +main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities concerning +it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merely +contracted form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized in +Venice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; and, by a +strange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace now owned +by Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. The present Contessa +Widman has lately restored her own palace, which was falling into ruin. + +That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrage +to her husband's second wife, has hung for many years in her grandson's +dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It represents a +stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the face or hair +betrays any indication of possible dark blood, it is imperceptible to +the general observer, and must be of too slight and fugitive a nature +to enter into the discussion. A long curl touches one shoulder. One +hand rests upon a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which was held to be +the proper study and recreation of cultivated women in those days. The +picture was painted by Wright of Derby. + +A brother of this lady was an adventurous traveller, and was said to +have penetrated farther into the interior of Africa than any other +European of his time. His violent death will be found recorded in a +singular experience of the poet's middle life. + + + + +Chapter 2 + +Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparison between +him and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of his Habits and +Character--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letter of +Mr. Locker-Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character and +Antecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy imparted to +both her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son. + + + +It was almost a matter of course that Robert Browning's father should be +disinclined for bank work. We are told, and can easily imagine, that he +was not so good an official as the grandfather; we know that he did not +rise so high, nor draw so large a salary. But he made the best of +his position for his family's sake, and it was at that time both more +important and more lucrative than such appointments have since become. +Its emoluments could be increased by many honourable means not covered +by the regular salary. The working-day was short, and every additional +hour's service well paid. To be enrolled on the night-watch was also +very remunerative; there were enormous perquisites in pens, paper, and +sealing-wax.* Mr. Browning availed himself of these opportunities of +adding to his income, and was thus enabled, with the help of his private +means, to gratify his scholarly and artistic tastes, and give his +children the benefit of a very liberal education--the one distinct ideal +of success in life which such a nature as his could form. Constituted as +he was, he probably suffered very little through the paternal unkindness +which had forced him into an uncongenial career. Its only palpable +result was to make him a more anxiously indulgent parent when his own +time came. + + * I have been told that, far from becoming careless in the + use of these things from his practically unbounded command + of them, he developed for them an almost superstitious + reverence. He could never endure to see a scrap of writing- + paper wasted. + +Many circumstances conspired to secure to the coming poet a happier +childhood and youth than his father had had. His path was to be smoothed +not only by natural affection and conscientious care, but by literary +and artistic sympathy. The second Mr. Browning differed, in certain +respects, as much from the third as from the first. There were, +nevertheless, strong points in which, if he did not resemble, he at +least distinctly foreshadowed him; and the genius of the one would lack +some possible explanation if we did not recognize in great measure its +organized material in the other. Much, indeed, that was genius in the +son existed as talent in the father. The moral nature of the younger +man diverged from that of the older, though retaining strong points of +similarity; but the mental equipments of the two differed far less +in themselves than in the different uses to which temperament and +circumstances trained them. + +The most salient intellectual characteristic of Mr. Browning senior was +his passion for reading. In his daughter's words, 'he read in season, +and out of season;' and he not only read, but remembered. As a +schoolboy, he knew by heart the first book of the 'Iliad', and all +the odes of Horace; and it shows how deeply the classical part of his +training must have entered into him, that he was wont, in later life, to +soothe his little boy to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. It +was one of his amusements at school to organize Homeric combats among +the boys, in which the fighting was carried on in the manner of the +Greeks and Trojans, and he and his friend Kenyon would arm themselves +with swords and shields, and hack at each other lustily, exciting +themselves to battle by insulting speeches derived from the Homeric +text.* + + * This anecdote is partly quoted from Mrs. Andrew Crosse, + who has introduced it into her article 'John Kenyon and his + Friends', + 'Temple Bar', April 1890. She herself received it from Mr. + Dykes Campbell. + +Mr. Browning had also an extraordinary power of versifying, and taught +his son from babyhood the words he wished him to remember, by joining +them to a grotesque rhyme; the child learned all his Latin declensions +in this way. His love of art had been proved by his desire to adopt it +as a profession; his talent for it was evidenced by the life and power +of the sketches, often caricatures, which fell from his pen or pencil as +easily as written words. Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a very +early elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes +(now in the possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) through +which his grandfather impressed upon him the names and position of the +principal bones of the human body. + +Even more remarkable than his delight in reading was the manner in +which Mr. Browning read. He carried into it all the preciseness of the +scholar. It was his habit when he bought a book--which was generally +an old one allowing of this addition--to have some pages of blank paper +bound into it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, or such +other supplementary matter as would enhance the interest, or assist the +mastering, of its contents; all written in a clear and firm though by +no means formal handwriting. More than one book thus treated by him +has passed through my hands, leaving in me, it need hardly be said, +a stronger impression of the owner's intellectual quality than the +acquisition by him of the finest library could have conveyed. One of the +experiences which disgusted him with St. Kitt's was the frustration +by its authorities of an attempt he was making to teach a negro boy +to read, and the understanding that all such educative action was +prohibited. + +In his faculties and attainments, as in his pleasures and appreciations, +he showed the simplicity and genuineness of a child. He was not only +ready to amuse, he could always identify himself with children, his +love for whom never failed him in even his latest years. His more than +childlike indifference to pecuniary advantages had been shown in early +life. He gave another proof of it after his wife's death, when he +declined a proposal, made to him by the Bank of England, to assist in +founding one of its branch establishments in Liverpool. He never indeed, +personally, cared for money, except as a means of acquiring old, i.e. +rare books, for which he had, as an acquaintance declared, the scent +of a hound and the snap of a bulldog. His eagerness to possess such +treasures was only matched by the generosity with which he parted with +them; and his daughter well remembers the feeling of angry suspicion +with which she and her brother noted the periodical arrival of a certain +visitor who would be closeted with their father for hours, and steal +away before the supper time, when the family would meet, with some +precious parcel of books or prints under his arm. + +It is almost superfluous to say that he was indifferent to creature +comforts. Miss Browning was convinced that, if on any occasion she had +said to him, 'There will be no dinner to-day,' he would only have +looked up from his book to reply, 'All right, my dear, it is of no +consequence.' In his bank-clerk days, when he sometimes dined in Town, +he left one restaurant with which he was not otherwise dissatisfied, +because the waiter always gave him the trouble of specifying what he +would have to eat. A hundred times that trouble would not have deterred +him from a kindly act. Of his goodness of heart, indeed, many distinct +instances might be given; but even this scanty outline of his life has +rendered them superfluous. + +Mr. Browning enjoyed splendid physical health. His early love of reading +had not precluded a wholesome enjoyment of athletic sports; and he was, +as a boy, the fastest runner and best base-ball player in his school. He +died, like his father, at eighty-four (or rather, within a few days of +eighty-five), but, unlike him, he had never been ill; a French friend +exclaimed when all was over, 'Il n'a jamais ete vieux.' His faculties +were so unclouded up to the last moment that he could watch himself +dying, and speculate on the nature of the change which was befalling +him. 'What do you think death is, Robert?' he said to his son; 'is it +a fainting, or is it a pang?' A notice of his decease appeared in an +American newspaper. It was written by an unknown hand, and bears a stamp +of genuineness which renders the greater part of it worth quoting. + + +'He was not only a ruddy, active man, with fine hair, that retained its +strength and brownness to the last, but he had a courageous spirit and a +remarkably intelligent mind. He was a man of the finest culture, and was +often, and never vainly, consulted by his son Robert concerning the more +recondite facts relating to the old characters, whose bones that poet +liked so well to disturb. His knowledge of old French, Spanish, and +Italian literature was wonderful. The old man went smiling and peaceful +to his long rest, preserving his faculties to the last, insomuch that +the physician, astonished at his continued calmness and good humour, +turned to his daughter, and said in a low voice, "Does this gentleman +know that he is dying?" The daughter said in a voice which the father +could hear, "He knows it;" and the old man said with a quiet smile, +"Death is no enemy in my eyes." His last words were spoken to his son +Robert, who was fanning him, "I fear I am wearying you, dear."' + + +Four years later one of his English acquaintances in Paris, Mr. +Frederick Locker, now Mr. Locker-Lampson, wrote to Robert Browning as +follows: + + +Dec. 26, 1870. + +My dear Browning,--I have always thought that you or Miss Browning, or +some other capable person, should draw up a sketch of your excellent +father so that, hereafter, it might be known what an interesting man he +was. + +I used often to meet you in Paris, at Lady Elgin's. She had a genuine +taste for poetry, and she liked being read to, and I remember you gave +her a copy of Keats' poems, and you used often to read his poetry to +her. Lady Elgin died in 1860, and I think it was in that year that Lady +Charlotte and I saw the most of Mr. Browning.* He was then quite an +elderly man, if years could make him so, but he had so much vivacity of +manner, and such simplicity and freshness of mind, that it was difficult +to think him old. + + * Mr. Locker was then married to Lady Charlotte Bruce, Lady + Elgin's daughter. + +I remember, he and your sister lived in an apartment in the Rue de +Grenelle, St. Germain, in quite a simple fashion, much in the way that +most people live in Paris, and in the way that all sensible people would +wish to live all over the world. + +Your father and I had at least one taste and affection in common. He +liked hunting the old bookstalls on the 'quais', and he had a great +love and admiration for Hogarth; and he possessed several of Hogarth's +engravings, some in rare and early states of the plate; and he would +relate with glee the circumstances under which he had picked them up, +and at so small a price too! However, he had none of the 'petit-maitre' +weakness of the ordinary collector, which is so common, and which I own +to!--such as an infatuation for tall copies, and wide margins. + +I remember your father was fond of drawing in a rough and ready fashion; +he had plenty of talent, I should think not very great cultivation; but +quite enough to serve his purpose, and to amuse his friends. He had a +thoroughly lively and _healthy_ interest in your poetry, and he showed me +some of your boyish attempts at versification. + +Taking your dear father altogether, I quite believe him to have been one +of those men--interesting men--whom the world never hears of. Perhaps he +was shy--at any rate he was much less known than he ought to have been; +and now, perhaps, he only remains in the recollection of his family, +and of one or two superior people (like myself!) who were capable of +appreciating him. My dear Browning, I really hope you will draw up a +slight sketch of your father before it is too late. Yours, Frederick +Locker. + + +The judgments thus expressed twenty years ago are cordially re-stated +in the letter in which Mr. Locker-Lampson authorizes me to publish them. +The desired memoir was never written; but the few details which I have +given of the older Mr. Browning's life and character may perhaps stand +for it. + +With regard to the 'strict dissent' with which her parents have been +taxed, Miss Browning writes to me: 'My father was born and educated in +the Church of England, and, for many years before his death, lived in +her communion. He became a Dissenter in middle life, and my mother, born +and brought up in the Kirk of Scotland, became one also; but they could +not be called bigoted, since we always in the evening attended the +preaching of the Rev. Henry Melvill* (afterwards Canon of St. Paul's), +whose sermons Robert much admired.'** + + * At Camden Chapel, Camberwell. + + ** Mr. Browning was much interested, in later years, in + hearing Canon, perhaps then already Archdeacon, Farrar extol + his eloquence and ask whether he had known him. Mr. Ruskin + also spoke of him with admiration. + +Little need be said about the poet's mother. She was spoken of by +Carlyle as 'the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman.' Mr. Kenyon +declared that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made +it wherever they were. But her character was all resumed in her son's +words, spoken with the tremulous emotion which so often accompanied his +allusion to those he had loved and lost: 'She was a divine woman.' She +was Scotch on the maternal side, and her kindly, gentle, but distinctly +evangelical Christianity must have been derived from that source. Her +father, William Wiedemann, a ship-owner, was a Hamburg German settled +in Dundee, and has been described by Mr. Browning as an accomplished +draughtsman and musician. She herself had nothing of the artist about +her, though we hear of her sometimes playing the piano; in all her +goodness and sweetness she seems to have been somewhat matter-of-fact. +But there is abundant indirect evidence of Mr. Browning's love of +music having come to him through her, and we are certainly justified in +holding the Scottish-German descent as accountable, in great measure +at least, for the metaphysical quality so early apparent in the poet's +mind, and of which we find no evidence in that of his father. His strong +religious instincts must have been derived from both parents, though +most anxiously fostered by his mother. + +There is yet another point on which Mrs. Browning must have influenced +the life and destinies of her son, that of physical health, or, at +least, nervous constitution. She was a delicate woman, very anaemic +during her later years, and a martyr to neuralgia, which was perhaps a +symptom of this condition. The acute ailment reproduced itself in +her daughter in spite of an otherwise vigorous constitution. With the +brother, the inheritance of suffering was not less surely present, if +more difficult to trace. We have been accustomed to speaking of him as a +brilliantly healthy man; he was healthy, even strong, in many essential +respects. Until past the age of seventy he could take long walks without +fatigue, and endure an amount of social and general physical strain +which would have tried many younger men. He carried on until the last a +large, if not always serious, correspondence, and only within the latest +months, perhaps weeks of his life, did his letters even suggest that +physical brain-power was failing him. He had, within the limits which +his death has assigned to it, a considerable recuperative power. His +consciousness of health was vivid, so long as he was well; and it was +only towards the end that the faith in his probable length of days +occasionally deserted him. But he died of no acute disease, more than +seven years younger than his father, having long carried with him +external marks of age from which his father remained exempt. Till +towards the age of forty he suffered from attacks of sore-throat, not +frequent, but of an angry kind. He was constantly troubled by imperfect +action of the liver, though no doctor pronounced the evil serious. I +have spoken of this in reference to his complexion. During the last +twenty years, if not for longer, he rarely spent a winter without a +suffocating cold and cough; within the last five, asthmatic symptoms +established themselves; and when he sank under what was perhaps his +first real attack of bronchitis it was not because the attack was very +severe, but because the heart was exhausted. The circumstances of his +death recalled that of his mother; and we might carry the sad analogy +still farther in his increasing pallor, and the slow and not strong +pulse which always characterized him. This would perhaps be a mistake. +It is difficult to reconcile any idea of bloodlessness with the bounding +vitality of his younger body and mind. Any symptom of organic disease +could scarcely, in his case, have been overlooked. But so much is +certain: he was conscious of what he called a nervousness of nature +which neither father nor grandfather could have bequeathed to him. He +imputed to this, or, in other words, to an undue physical sensitiveness +to mental causes of irritation, his proneness to deranged liver, and +the asthmatic conditions which he believed, rightly or wrongly, to be +produced by it. He was perhaps mistaken in some of his inferences, but +he was not mistaken in the fact. He had the pleasures as well as the +pains of this nervous temperament; its quick response to every congenial +stimulus of physical atmosphere, and human contact. It heightened the +enjoyment, perhaps exaggerated the consciousness of his physical powers. +It also certainly in his later years led him to overdraw them. Many +persons have believed that he could not live without society; a +prolonged seclusion from it would, for obvious reasons, have been +unsuited to him. But the excited gaiety which to the last he carried +into every social gathering was often primarily the result of a moral +and physical effort which his temperament prompted, but his strength +could not always justify. Nature avenged herself in recurrent periods of +exhaustion, long before the closing stage had set in. + +I shall subsequently have occasion to trace this nervous impressibility +through various aspects and relations of his life; all I now seek to +show is that this healthiest of poets and most real of men was not +compounded of elements of pure health, and perhaps never could have been +so. It might sound grotesque to say that only a delicate woman could +have been the mother of Robert Browning. The fact remains that of such +a one, and no other, he was born; and we may imagine, without being +fanciful, that his father's placid intellectual powers required for +their transmutation into poetic genius just this infusion of a vital +element not only charged with other racial and individual qualities, but +physically and morally more nearly allied to pain. Perhaps, even for his +happiness as a man, we could not have wished it otherwise. + + + + +Chapter 3 + +1812-1826 + +Birth of Robert Browning--His Childhood and Schooldays--Restless +Temperament--Brilliant Mental Endowments--Incidental +Peculiarities--Strong Religious Feeling--Passionate Attachment to his +Mother; Grief at first Separation--Fondness for Animals--Experiences of +School Life--Extensive Reading--Early Attempts in Verse--Letter from his +Father concerning them--Spurious Poems in Circulation--'Incondita'--Mr. +Fox--Miss Flower. + + + +Robert Browning was born, as has been often repeated, at Camberwell, on +May 7, 1812, soon after a great comet had disappeared from the sky. +He was a handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed an +unresting activity and a fiery temper. He clamoured for occupation from +the moment he could speak. His mother could only keep him quiet when +once he had emerged from infancy by telling him stories--doubtless +Bible stories--while holding him on her knee. His energies were of +course destructive till they had found their proper outlet; but we do +not hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake of +doing so. His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsome +Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; but the motive, which +he was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: 'A pitty baze +[pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon came to his rescue. It has +often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round and +round the dining-room table supporting himself by his hands, when he was +still so small that his head was scarcely above it. He remembered having +entertained his mother in the very first walk he was considered old +enough to take with her, by a fantastic account of his possessions in +houses, &c., of which the topographical details elicited from her the +remark, 'Why, sir, you are quite a geographer.' And though this kind of +romancing is common enough among intelligent children, it distinguishes +itself in this case by the strong impression which the incident had left +on his own mind. It seems to have been a first real flight of dramatic +fancy, confusing his identity for the time being. + +The power of inventing did not, however, interfere with his readiness to +learn, and the facility with which he acquired whatever knowledge came +in his way had, on one occasion, inconvenient results. A lady of reduced +fortunes kept a small elementary school for boys, a stone's-throw from +his home; and he was sent to it as a day boarder at so tender an age +that his parents, it is supposed, had no object in view but to get +rid of his turbulent activity for an hour or two every morning and +afternoon. Nevertheless, his proficiency in reading and spelling was +soon so much ahead of that of the biggest boy, that complaints broke +out among the mammas, who were sure there was not fair play. Mrs.----was +neglecting her other pupils for the sake of 'bringing on Master +Browning;' and the poor lady found it necessary to discourage Master +Browning's attendance lest she should lose the remainder of her flock. +This, at least, was the story as he himself remembered it. According to +Miss Browning his instructress did not yield without a parting shot. +She retorted on the discontented parents that, if she could give their +children 'Master Browning's intellect', she would have no difficulty +in satisfying them. After this came the interlude of home-teaching, in +which all his elementary knowledge must have been gained. As an older +child he was placed with two Misses Ready, who prepared boys for +entering their brother's (the Rev. Thomas Ready's) school; and in due +time he passed into the latter, where he remained up to the age of +fourteen. + +He seems in those early days to have had few playmates beyond his +sister, two years younger than himself, and whom his irrepressible +spirit must sometimes have frightened or repelled. Nor do we hear +anything of childish loves; and though an entry appeared in his diary +one Sunday in about the seventh or eighth year of his age, 'married two +wives this morning,' it only referred to a vague imaginary appropriation +of two girls whom he had just seen in church, and whose charm probably +lay in their being much bigger than he. He was, however, capable of a +self-conscious shyness in the presence of even a little girl; and his +sense of certain proprieties was extraordinarily keen. He told a friend +that on one occasion, when the merest child, he had edged his way by the +wall from one point of his bedroom to another, because he was not fully +clothed, and his reflection in the glass could otherwise have been seen +through the partly open door.* + + * Another anecdote, of a very different kind, belongs to an + earlier period, and to that category of pure naughtiness + which could not fail to be sometimes represented in the + conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his + mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy', + had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the + contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes + apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a + certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a + baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name + denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy + resented Aunt Betsy's manner as an affront; and he + determined, after probably repeated provocation, to show her + something worse than a 'lover', whatever this might be. So + one night he slipped out of bed, exchanged his nightgown for + what he considered the appropriate undress of a devil, + completed this by a paper tail, and the ugliest face he + could make, and rushed into the drawing-room, where the old + lady and his mother were drinking tea. He was snatched up + and carried away before he had had time to judge the effect + of his apparition; but he did not think, looking back upon + the circumstances in later life, that Aunt Betsy had + deserved quite so ill of her fellow-creatures as he then + believed. + +His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion. The early +Biblical training had had its effect, and he was, to use his own words, +'passionately religious' in those nursery years; but during them and +many succeeding ones, his mother filled his heart. He loved her so much, +he has been heard to say, that even as a grown man he could not sit +by her otherwise than with an arm round her waist. It is difficult to +measure the influence which this feeling may have exercised on his later +life; it led, even now, to a strange and touching little incident +which had in it the incipient poet no less than the loving child. His +attendance at Miss Ready's school only kept him from home from Monday +till Saturday of every week; but when called upon to confront his first +five days of banishment he felt sure that he would not survive them. A +leaden cistern belonging to the school had in, or outside it, the raised +image of a face. He chose the cistern for his place of burial, and +converted the face into his epitaph by passing his hand over and over it +to a continuous chant of: 'In memory of unhappy Browning'--the ceremony +being renewed in his spare moments, till the acute stage of the feeling +had passed away. + +The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted, was +conspicuous in his very earliest days. His urgent demand for 'something +to do' would constantly include 'something to be caught' for him: 'they +were to catch him an eft;' 'they were to catch him a frog.' He would +refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog +from among the strawberries; and the maternal parasol, hovering above +the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires, +remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of the +uncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile +projects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution to +which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter's day on a wall +and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled, +'Animals found surviving in the depths of a severe winter.' Nor did +curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for +birds and beasts was the counterpart of his father's love of children, +only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally +appears. His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sister +and him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death +by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the +sight of the book; and as he dared not destroy it, he buried it between +the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where it +stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heard +the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who +enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, +he--and his sister with him--cried so bitterly that it was found +necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot +was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully +in it ever after. + +As a boy, he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, +and even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home the more +portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother +for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful +tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed +and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great +intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his +works is readily explained by these facts. + +Mr. Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in the +neighbourhood; and both there and under the preparatory training of that +gentleman's sisters, the young Robert was well and kindly cared for. The +Misses Ready especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfare +of their pupils. The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by the +singing, and fell naturally into the measure, of Watts's hymns; and Mr. +Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs by illustrating +with voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis with which the brush would +swoop down in the accentuated syllables of the following lines: + + Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand + In gardens planted by Thy hand. + + . . . . . + + Fools never raise their thoughts so high, + Like 'brutes' they live, like _brutes_ they die. + +He even compelled his mother to laugh at it, though it was sorely +against her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing of piously +intended things.* He had become a bigger boy since the episode of the +cistern, and had probably in some degree outgrown the intense piety of +his earlier childhood. This little incident seems to prove it. On the +whole, however, his religious instincts did not need strengthening, +though his sense of humour might get the better of them for a moment; +and of secular instruction he seems to have received as little from the +one set of teachers as from the other. I do not suppose that the mental +training at Mr. Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical than that +of most other schools of his own or, indeed, of a much later period; but +the brilliant abilities of Robert Browning inspired him with a certain +contempt for it, as also for the average schoolboy intelligence to +which it was apparently adapted. It must be for this reason that, as he +himself declared, he never gained a prize, although these rewards were +showered in such profusion that the only difficulty was to avoid +them; and if he did not make friends at school (for this also has been +somewhere observed),** it can only be explained in the same way. He +was at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him as more +backward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely to have +taken pains to conceal the impression. It is difficult, at all events, +to think of him as unsociable, and his talents certainly had their +amusing side. Miss Browning tells me that he made his schoolfellows +act plays, some of which he had written for them; and he delighted his +friends, not long ago, by mimicking his own solemn appearance on some +breaking-up or commemorative day, when, according to programme, 'Master +Browning' ascended a platform in the presence of assembled parents and +friends, and, in best jacket, white gloves, and carefully curled hair, +with a circular bow to the company and the then prescribed waving +of alternate arms, delivered a high-flown rhymed address of his own +composition. + + * In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always + recognized great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in + Dr. Watts himself, who had devoted to this comparatively + humble work intellectual powers competent to far higher + things. + + ** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards + Sir William, Channel was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning + went to him; but a friendly acquaintance began, and was + afterwards continued, between the two boys; and a closer + friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank, was only + interrupted by his death. Another school friend or + acquaintance recalled himself as such to the poet's memory + some ten or twelve years ago. A man who has reached the age + at which his boyhood becomes of interest to the world may + even have survived many such relations. + +And during the busy idleness of his schooldays, or, at all events, in +the holidays in which he rested from it, he was learning, as perhaps +only those do learn whose real education is derived from home. His +father's house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed with +books; and, she adds, 'it was in this way that Robert became very early +familiar with subjects generally unknown to boys.' He read omnivorously, +though certainly not without guidance. One of the books he best and +earliest loved was 'Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed in +a seventeenth century edition, and which contains one or two very +tentative specimens of his early handwriting. Its quaint, powerful lines +and still quainter illustrations combined the marvellous with what he +believed to be true; and he seemed specially identified with its world +of religious fancies by the fact that the soul in it was always depicted +as a child. On its more general grounds his reading was at once largely +literary and very historical; and it was in this direction that the +paternal influence was most strongly revealed. 'Quarles' Emblemes' +was only one of the large collection of old books which Mr. Browning +possessed; and the young Robert learnt to know each favourite author in +the dress as well as the language which carried with it the life of his +period. The first edition of 'Robinson Crusoe'; the first edition of +Milton's works, bought for him by his father; a treatise on astrology +published twenty years after the introduction of printing; the original +pamphlet 'Killing no Murder' (1559), which Carlyle borrowed for his +'Life of Cromwell'; an equally early copy of Bernard Mandeville's +'Bees'; very ancient Bibles--are some of the instances which occur to +me. Among more modern publications, 'Walpole's Letters' were familiar to +him in boyhood, as well as the 'Letters of Junius' and all the works of +Voltaire. + +Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part in the mental +culture superintended by Robert Browning's father: we can indeed imagine +no case in which they would not have found their way into the boy's +life. Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him in their due time, +though his special delight in the Greek language only developed itself +later. But his loving, lifelong familiarity with the Elizabethan school, +and indeed with the whole range of English poetry, seems to point to +a more constant study of our national literature. Byron was his chief +master in those early poetic days. He never ceased to honour him as the +one poet who combined a constructive imagination with the more technical +qualities of his art; and the result of this period of aesthetic +training was a volume of short poems produced, we are told, when he was +only twelve, in which the Byronic influence was predominant. + +The young author gave his work the title of 'Incondita', which conveyed +a certain idea of deprecation. He was, nevertheless, very anxious to see +it in print; and his father and mother, poetry-lovers of the old +school, also found in it sufficient merit to justify its publication. +No publisher, however, could be found; and we can easily believe that +he soon afterwards destroyed the little manuscript, in some mingled +reaction of disappointment and disgust. But his mother, meanwhile, had +shown it to an acquaintance of hers, Miss Flower, who herself admired +its contents so much as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her +friend, the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was +transmitted to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs. +Bridell-Fox; and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at +his urgent request, that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse +contained in a letter from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much later +that a friend, who had earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitely +heard of its destruction. The fragment, which doubtless shared the same +fate, was, I am told, a direct imitation of Coleridge's 'Fire, Famine, +and Slaughter'. + +These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible to +believe them such when we remember that he composed verses long before +he could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact has recently +appeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning have found their way +into the market, and have been bought respectively by Mr. Dykes Campbell +and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them. It was addressed +to Mr. Thomas Powell: + + +Dear Sir,--I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. They +were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly a hundred +of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, having a +great aversion to the practice of many biographers in recording every +trifling incident that falls in their way. He has not the slightest +suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances are in existence. +I have several of the originals by me. They are all extemporaneous +productions, nor has any one a single alteration. There was one amongst +them 'On Bonaparte'--remarkably beautiful--and had I not seen it in +his own handwriting I never would have believed it to have been the +production of a child. It is destroyed. Pardon my troubling you with +these specimens, and requesting you never to mention it, as Robert +would be very much hurt. I remain, dear sir, Your obedient servant, R. +Browning. Bank: March 11, 1843. + + +The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been sold +and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which the +writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father's +own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together with +the occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from the +first, have been accidental. + +We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's +genius without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can +have been little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem +to have lain in the direction of too great splendour of language and too +little wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read 'Incondita' and been +struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning that he had +feared these tendencies as his future snare. But the imitative first +note of a young poet's voice may hold a rapture of inspiration which +his most original later utterances will never convey. It is the child +Sordello, singing against the lark. + +Not even the poet's sister ever saw 'Incondita'. It was the only one of +his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read, or even +help him to write out. She was then too young to be taken into his +confidence. Its writing, however, had one important result. It procured +for the boy-poet a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary +patron and friend Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the +first substantial record of an acquaintance which made a considerable +impression on his personal life. + +The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters, +both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place +in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie, +was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams, +a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known +'Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.* They +sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment, +their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were, in their +different ways, very attractive; both interesting, not only from their +talents, but from their attachment to each other, and the delicacy which +shortened their lives. They died of consumption, the elder in 1846, at +the age of forty-three; the younger a year later. They became acquainted +with Mrs. Browning through a common friend, Miss Sturtevant; and the +young Robert conceived a warm admiration for Miss Flower's talents, +and a boyish love for herself. She was nine years his senior; her own +affections became probably engaged, and, as time advanced, his feeling +seems to have subsided into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We +hear, indeed, of his falling in love, as he was emerging from his teens, +with a handsome girl who was on a visit at his father's house. But the +fancy died out 'for want of root.' The admiration, even tenderness, for +Miss Flower had so deep a 'root' that he never in latest life mentioned +her name with indifference. In a letter to Mr. Dykes Campbell, in 1881, +he spoke of her as 'a very remarkable person.' If, in spite of his +denials, any woman inspired 'Pauline', it can have been no other than +she. He began writing to her at twelve or thirteen, probably on the +occasion of her expressed sympathy with his first distinct effort at +authorship; and what he afterwards called 'the few utterly insignificant +scraps of letters and verse' which formed his part of the correspondence +were preserved by her as long as she lived. But he recovered and +destroyed them after his return to England, with all the other +reminiscences of those early years. Some notes, however, are extant, +dated respectively, 1841, 1842, and 1845, and will be given in their due +place. + + * She also wrote a dramatic poem in five acts, entitled + 'Vivia Perpetua', referred to by Mrs. Jameson in her 'Sacred + and Legendary Art', and by Leigh Hunt, when he spoke of her + in 'Blue-Stocking Revels', as 'Mrs. Adams, rare mistress of + thought and of tears.' + +Mr. Fox was a friend of Miss Flower's father (Benjamin Flower, known as +editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer'), and, at his death, in 1829, +became co-executor to his will, and a kind of guardian to his daughters, +then both unmarried, and motherless from their infancy. Eliza's +principal work was a collection of hymns and anthems, originally +composed for Mr. Fox's chapel, where she had assumed the entire +management of the choral part of the service. Her abilities were not +confined to music; she possessed, I am told, an instinctive taste and +judgment in literary matters which caused her opinion to be much valued +by literary men. But Mr. Browning's genuine appreciation of her musical +genius was probably the strongest permanent bond between them. We shall +hear of this in his own words. + + + + +Chapter 4 + +1826-1833 + +First Impressions of Keats and Shelley--Prolonged Influence +of Shelley--Details of Home Education--Its Effects--Youthful +Restlessness--Counteracting Love of Home--Early Friendships: Alfred +Domett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes--Choice of Poetry as a +Profession--Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning +them--Interest in Art--Love of good Theatrical Performances--Talent for +Acting--Final Preparation for Literary Life. + + + +At the period at which we have arrived, which is that of his leaving +school and completing his fourteenth year, another and a significant +influence was dawning on Robert Browning's life--the influence of the +poet Shelley. Mr. Sharp writes,* and I could only state the facts +in similar words, 'Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box +of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's +Atheistical Poem: very scarce."' . . . 'From vague remarks in reply to +his inquiries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned that +there really was a poet called Shelley; that he had written several +volumes; that he was dead.' . . . 'He begged his mother to procure him +Shelley's works, a request not easily complied with, for the excellent +reason that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of the +poet's name. Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what she +sought was procurable at the Olliers', in Vere Street, London.' + + * 'Life of Browning', pp. 30, 31. + +Mrs. Browning went to Messrs. Ollier, and brought back 'most of +Shelley's writings, all in their first edition, with the exception of +"The Cenci".' She brought also three volumes of the still less known +John Keats, on being assured that one who liked Shelley's works would +like these also. + +Keats and Shelley must always remain connected in this epoch of +Mr. Browning's poetic growth. They indeed came to him as the two +nightingales which, he told some friends, sang together in the May-night +which closed this eventful day: one in the laburnum in his father's +garden, the other in a copper beech which stood on adjoining +ground--with the difference indeed, that he must often have listened +to the feathered singers before, while the two new human voices sounded +from what were to him, as to so many later hearers, unknown heights and +depths of the imaginative world. Their utterance was, to such a spirit +as his, the last, as in a certain sense the first, word of what +poetry can say; and no one who has ever heard him read the 'Ode to a +Nightingale', and repeat in the same subdued tones, as if continuing +his own thoughts, some line from 'Epipsychidion', can doubt that they +retained a lasting and almost equal place in his poet's heart. But the +two cannot be regarded as equals in their relation to his life, and it +would be a great mistake to impute to either any important influence +upon his genius. We may catch some fleeting echoes of Keats's melody +in 'Pippa Passes'; it is almost a commonplace that some measure +of Shelleyan fancy is recognizable in 'Pauline'. But the poetic +individuality of Robert Browning was stronger than any circumstance +through which it could be fed. It would have found nourishment in desert +air. With his first accepted work he threw off what was foreign to +his poetic nature, to be thenceforward his own never-to-be-subdued and +never-to-be-mistaken self. If Shelley became, and long remained for him, +the greatest poet of his age--of almost any age--it was not because he +held him greatest in the poetic art, but because in his case, beyond +all others, he believed its exercise to have been prompted by the truest +spiritual inspiration. + +It is difficult to trace the process by which this conviction formed +itself in the boy's mind; still more to account for the strong personal +tenderness which accompanied it. The facts can have been scarcely known +which were to present Shelley to his imagination as a maligned and +persecuted man. It is hard to judge how far such human qualities as we +now read into his work, could be apparent to one who only approached him +through it. But the extra-human note in Shelley's genius irresistibly +suggested to the Browning of fourteen, as it still did to the Browning +of forty, the presence of a lofty spirit, one dwelling in the communion +of higher things. There was often a deep sadness in his utterance; the +consecration of an early death was upon him. And so the worship rooted +itself and grew. It was to find its lyrical expression in 'Pauline'; its +rational and, from the writer's point of view, philosophic justification +in the prose essay on Shelley, published eighteen years afterwards. + +It may appear inconsistent with the nature of this influence that +it began by appealing to him in a subversive form. The Shelley whom +Browning first loved was the Shelley of 'Queen Mab', the Shelley who +would have remodelled the whole system of religious belief, as of human +duty and rights; and the earliest result of the new development was +that he became a professing atheist, and, for two years, a practising +vegetarian. He returned to his natural diet when he found his eyesight +becoming weak. The atheism cured itself; we do not exactly know when or +how. What we do know is, that it was with him a passing state of moral +or imaginative rebellion, and not one of rational doubt. His mind was +not so constituted that such doubt could fasten itself upon it; nor +did he ever in after-life speak of this period of negation except as +an access of boyish folly, with which his maturer self could have no +concern. The return to religious belief did not shake his faith in his +new prophet. It only made him willing to admit that he had misread him. + +This Shelley period of Robert Browning's life--that which intervened +between 'Incondita' and 'Pauline'--remained, nevertheless, one of +rebellion and unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributed +besides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided that he was +to complete, or at all events continue, his education at home; and, +knowing the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt that the best +reasons, of kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding. It was none +the less, probably, a mistake, for the time being. The conditions of +home life were the more favourable for the young poet's imaginative +growth; but there can rarely have been a boy whose moral and mental +health had more to gain by the combined discipline and freedom of a +public school. His home training was made to include everything which +in those days went to the production of an accomplished gentleman, and +a great deal therefore that was physically good. He learned music, +singing, dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing, and excelled in the +more active of these pursuits. The study of music was also serious, and +carried on under two masters. Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable work +on counterpoint, was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil +of Moscheles, in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himself +sang; among them Donne's 'Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's 'I will +not have the mad Clytie'; Peacock's 'The mountain sheep are sweeter'; +and his settings, all of which he subsequently destroyed, were, I am +told, very spirited. His education seems otherwise to have been purely +literary. For two years, from the age of fourteen to that of sixteen, +he studied with a French tutor, who, whether this was intended or not, +imparted to him very little but a good knowledge of the French language +and literature. In his eighteenth year he attended, for a term or two, +a Greek class at the London University. His classical and other +reading was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of +mathematics, or logic--of any, in short, of those subjects which train, +even coerce, the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for +a nature in which the creative imagination was predominant over all the +other mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, even +as poet, he suffered from this omission: since the involutions and +overlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his earlier and again +in his latest works, must have been partly due to his never learning to +follow the processes of more normally constituted minds. It would be +a great error to suppose that they ever arose from the absence of a +meaning clearly felt, if not always clearly thought out, by himself. He +was storing his memory and enriching his mind; but precisely in so +doing he was nourishing the consciousness of a very vivid and urgent +personality; and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of a +home-bred youth, it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found +in verse we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then +have written. It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, +still more, the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards +poetic production. It would be a relief to him to sketch out and +elaborate the plan of his future work--his great mental portrait gallery +of typical men and women; and he was doing so during at least the later +years which preceded the birth of 'Pauline'. But even this must have +been the result of some protracted travail with himself; because it was +only the inward sense of very varied possibilities of existence which +could have impelled him towards this kind of creation. No character he +ever produced was merely a figment of the brain. + +It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he should +have been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other. +The always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness. He +behaved as a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes +that he is not appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms which +his cleverness assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds. He +set the judgments of those about him at defiance, and gratuitously +proclaimed himself everything that he was, and some things that he was +not. All this subdued itself as time advanced, and the coming man in him +could throw off the wayward child. It was all so natural that it might +well be forgotten. But it distressed his mother, the one being in the +world whom he entirely loved; and deserves remembering in the tender +sorrow with which he himself remembered it. He was always ready to +say that he had been worth little in his young days; indeed, his +self-depreciation covered the greater part of his life. This was, +perhaps, one reason of the difficulty of inducing him to dwell upon +his past. 'I am better now,' he has said more than once, when its +reminiscences have been invoked. + +One tender little bond maintained itself between his mother and himself +so long as he lived under the paternal roof; it was his rule never to go +to bed without giving her a good-night kiss. If he was out so late that +he had to admit himself with a latch-key, he nevertheless went to her +in her room. Nor did he submit to this as a necessary restraint; for, +except on the occasions of his going abroad, it is scarcely on record +that he ever willingly spent a night away from home. It may not stand +for much, or it may stand to the credit of his restlessness, that, +when he had been placed with some gentleman in Gower Street, for the +convenience of attending the University lectures, or for the sake of +preparing for them, he broke through the arrangement at the end of a +week; but even an agreeable visit had no power to detain him beyond a +few days. + +This home-loving quality was in curious contrast to the natural +bohemianism of youthful genius, and the inclination to wildness which +asserted itself in his boyish days. It became the more striking as he +entered upon the age at which no reasonable amount of freedom can +have been denied to him. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for the +pecuniary dependence which forbade his forming any expensive habits of +amusement; but he also claims the credit of having been unable to accept +any low-life pleasures in place of them. I do not know how the idea can +have arisen that he willingly sought his experience in the society +of 'gipsies and tramps'. I remember nothing in his works which even +suggests such association; and it is certain that a few hours spent at a +fair would at all times have exhausted his capability of enduring it. +In the most audacious imaginings of his later life, in the most +undisciplined acts of his early youth, were always present curious +delicacies and reserves. There was always latent in him the real +goodness of heart which would not allow him to trifle consciously with +other lives. Work must also have been his safeguard when the habit of it +had been acquired, and when imagination, once his master, had learned to +serve him. + +One tangible cause of his youthful restlessness has been implied in the +foregoing remarks, but deserves stating in his sister's words: 'The +fact was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. They were +absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he +chafed under them.' He was not, however, quite without congenial society +even before the turning-point in his outward existence which was reached +in the publication of 'Pauline'; and one long friendly acquaintance, +together with one lasting friendship, had their roots in these early +Camberwell days. The families of Joseph Arnould and Alfred Domett +both lived at Camberwell. These two young men were bred to the legal +profession, and the former, afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould, became +a judge in Bombay. But the father of Alfred Domett had been one of +Nelson's captains, and the roving sailor spirit was apparent in his +son; for he had scarcely been called to the Bar when he started for New +Zealand on the instance of a cousin who had preceded him, but who was +drowned in the course of a day's surveying before he could arrive. He +became a member of the New Zealand Parliament, and ultimately, for a +short time, of its Cabinet; only returning to England after an absence +of thirty years. This Mr. Domett seems to have been a very modest man, +besides a devoted friend of Robert Browning's, and on occasion a warm +defender of his works. When he read the apostrophe to 'Alfred, dear +friend,' in the 'Guardian Angel', he had reached the last line before it +occurred to him that the person invoked could be he. I do not think that +this poem, and that directly addressed to him under the pseudonym of +'Waring', were the only ones inspired by the affectionate remembrance +which he had left in their author's mind. + +Among his boy companions were also the three Silverthornes, his +neighbours at Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side. They appear +to have been wild youths, and had certainly no part in his intellectual +or literary life; but the group is interesting to his biographer. +The three brothers were all gifted musicians; having also, probably, +received this endowment from their mother's father. Mr. Browning +conceived a great affection for the eldest, and on the whole most +talented of the cousins; and when he had died--young, as they all +did--he wrote 'May and Death' in remembrance of him. The name of +'Charles' stands there for the old, familiar 'Jim', so often uttered by +him in half-pitying, and all-affectionate allusion, in his later years. +Mrs. Silverthorne was the aunt who paid for the printing of 'Pauline'. + +It was at about the time of his short attendance at University College +that the choice of poetry as his future profession was formally made. It +was a foregone conclusion in the young Robert's mind; and little less +in that of his father, who took too sympathetic an interest in his son's +life not to have seen in what direction his desires were tending. He +must, it is true, at some time or other, have played with the thought of +becoming an artist; but the thought can never have represented a wish. +If he had entertained such a one, it would have met not only with no +opposition on his father's part, but with a very ready assent, nor +does the question ever seem to have been seriously mooted in the family +councils. It would be strange, perhaps, if it had. Mr. Browning became +very early familiar with the names of the great painters, and also +learned something about their work; for the Dulwich Gallery was within a +pleasant walk of his home, and his father constantly took him there. He +retained through life a deep interest in art and artists, and became a +very familiar figure in one or two London studios. Some drawings made +by him from the nude, in Italy, and for which he had prepared himself by +assiduous copying of casts and study of human anatomy, had, I believe, +great merit. But painting was one of the subjects in which he never +received instruction, though he modelled, under the direction of his +friend Mr. Story; and a letter of his own will presently show that, in +his youth at least, he never credited himself with exceptional artistic +power. That he might have become an artist, and perhaps a great one, +is difficult to doubt, in the face of his brilliant general ability and +special gifts. The power to do a thing is, however, distinct from the +impulse to do it, and proved so in the present case. + +More importance may be given to an idea of his father's that he should +qualify himself for the Bar. It would naturally coincide with the +widening of the social horizon which his University College classes +supplied; it was possibly suggested by the fact that the closest friends +he had already made, and others whom he was perhaps now making, were +barristers. But this also remained an idea. He might have been placed in +the Bank of England, where the virtual offer of an appointment had been +made to him through his father; but the elder Browning spontaneously +rejected this, as unworthy of his son's powers. He had never, he said, +liked bank work himself, and could not, therefore, impose it on him. + +We have still to notice another, and a more mistaken view of the +possibilities of Mr. Browning's life. It has been recently stated, +doubtless on the authority of some words of his own, that the Church was +a profession to which he once felt himself drawn. But an admission of +this kind could only refer to that period of his childhood when natural +impulse, combined with his mother's teaching and guidance, frequently +caused his fancy and his feelings to assume a religious form. From the +time when he was a free agent he ceased to be even a regular churchgoer, +though religion became more, rather than less, an integral part of his +inner life; and his alleged fondness for a variety of preachers meant +really that he only listened to those who, from personal association +or conspicuous merit, were interesting to him. I have mentioned Canon +Melvill as one of these; the Rev. Thomas Jones was, as will be +seen, another. In Venice he constantly, with his sister, joined the +congregation of an Italian minister of the little Vaudois church there.* + + * Mr. Browning's memory recalled a first and last effort at + preaching, inspired by one of his very earliest visits to a + place of worship. He extemporized a surplice or gown, + climbed into an arm-chair by way of pulpit, and held forth + so vehemently that his scarcely more than baby sister was + frightened and began to cry; whereupon he turned to an + imaginary presence, and said, with all the sternness which + the occasion required, 'Pew-opener, remove that child.' + +It would be far less surprising if we were told, on sufficient +authority, that he had been disturbed by hankerings for the stage. He +was a passionate admirer of good acting, and would walk from London to +Richmond and back again to see Edmund Kean when he was performing there. +We know how Macready impressed him, though the finer genius of Kean +became very apparent to his retrospective judgment of the two; and it +was impossible to see or hear him, as even an old man, in some momentary +personation of one of Shakespeare's characters, above all of Richard +III., and not feel that a great actor had been lost in him. + +So few professions were thought open to gentlemen in Robert Browning's +eighteenth year, that his father's acquiescence in that which he had +chosen might seem a matter scarcely less of necessity than of kindness. +But we must seek the kindness not only in this first, almost inevitable, +assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent unfailing +readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus', +'Sordello', and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at +his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought no return +to him. This was vividly present to Mr. Browning's mind in what Mrs. +Kemble so justly defines as those 'remembering days' which are the +natural prelude to the forgetting ones. He declared, in the course of +these, to a friend, that for it alone he owed more to his father than to +anyone else in the world. Words to this effect, spoken in conversation +with his sister, have since, as it was right they should, found their +way into print. The more justly will the world interpret any incidental +admission he may ever have made, of intellectual disagreement between +that father and himself. + +When the die was cast, and young Browning was definitely to adopt +literature as his profession, he qualified himself for it by reading and +digesting the whole of Johnson's Dictionary. We cannot be surprised to +hear this of one who displayed so great a mastery of words, and so deep +a knowledge of the capacities of the English language. + + + + +Chapter 5 + +1833-1835 + +'Pauline'--Letters to Mr. Fox--Publication of the Poem; chief +Biographical and Literary Characteristics--Mr. Fox's Review in the +'Monthly Repository'; other Notices--Russian Journey--Desired diplomatic +Appointment--Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of Appearance--'The +Trifler'--M. de Ripert-Monclar--'Paracelsus'--Letters to Mr. Fox +concerning it; its Publication--Incidental Origin of 'Paracelsus'; its +inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'--Mr. Fox's Review of it in +the 'Monthly Repository'--Article in the 'Examiner' by John Forster. + + + +Before Mr. Browning had half completed his twenty-first year he had +written 'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession'. His sister was in the +secret, but this time his parents were not. This is why his aunt, +hearing that 'Robert' had 'written a poem,' volunteered the sum +requisite for its publication. Even this first instalment of success did +not inspire much hope in the family mind, and Miss Browning made pencil +copies of her favourite passages for the event, which seemed only too +possible, of her never seeing the whole poem again. It was, however, +accepted by Saunders and Otley, and appeared anonymously in 1833. +Meanwhile the young author had bethought himself of his early +sympathizer, Mr. Fox, and he wrote to him as follows (the letter is +undated): + + +Dear Sir,--Perhaps by the aid of the subjoined initials and a little +reflection, you may recollect an oddish sort of boy, who had the honour +of being introduced to you at Hackney some years back--at that time +a sayer of verse and a doer of it, and whose doings you had a little +previously commended after a fashion--(whether in earnest or not God +knows): that individual it is who takes the liberty of addressing one +whose slight commendation then, was more thought of than all the gun +drum and trumpet of praise would be now, and to submit to you a free and +easy sort of thing which he wrote some months ago 'on one leg' and which +comes out this week--having either heard or dreamed that you contribute +to the 'Westminster'. + +Should it be found too insignificant for cutting up, I shall no less +remain, Dear sir, Your most obedient servant, R. B. + +I have forgotten the main thing--which is to beg you not to spoil +a loophole I have kept for backing out of the thing if necessary, +'sympathy of dear friends,' &c. &c., none of whom know anything about +it. + +Monday Morning; Rev.--Fox. + + +The answer was clearly encouraging, and Mr. Browning wrote again: + + +Dear Sir,--In consequence of your kind permission I send, or will send, +a dozen copies of 'Pauline' and (to mitigate the infliction) Shelley's +Poem--on account of what you mentioned this morning. It will perhaps +be as well that you let me know their safe arrival by a line to R. B. +junior, Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell. You must not +think me too encroaching, if I make the getting back 'Rosalind and +Helen' an excuse for calling on you some evening--the said 'R. and +H.' has, I observe, been well thumbed and sedulously marked by an +acquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of love. +I am, dear sir, Yours very really, R. Browning. Camberwell: 2 o'clock. + + +At the left-hand corner of the first page of this note is written: 'The +parcel--a "Pauline" parcel--is come. I send one as a witness.' + +On the inner page is written: + +'Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R.--pronounced "heavy"-- + +'A _heavy_ sermon!--sure the error's great, For not a word Tom uttered +_had its weight_.' + +A third letter, also undated, but post-marked March 29, 1833, refers +probably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. A fourth +conveys Mr. Browning's thanks for the notice itself: + + +My dear Sir,--I have just received your letter, which I am desirous of +acknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me;--I +can only offer you my simple thanks--but they are of the sort that one +can give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, I think +you are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel--and it will have +been worth while to have made a fool of myself, only to have obtained a +'case' which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville at a dead lock. + +As for the book--I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve your +goodness. + +In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir, +Your most obliged and obedient servant R. B. S. & O.'s, Conduit St., +Thursday m-g. + + + +I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I had +intended--but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect at +all hazards. + +I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, and +not altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your most +generous 'coming forward'. Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewhere +tells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country who had 'always +prophesied he would be something'!--I shall never write a line without +thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured. I am, dear sir, +Yours most truly and obliged, Robert Browning. March 31, 1833. + + +Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the 'Monthly Repository', +which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her graceful +article on Robert Browning, in the 'Argosy' for February 1890, he was +endeavouring to raise from its original denominational character into +a first-class literary and political journal. The articles comprised in +the volume for 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, at once +more popular and more solid than those prescribed by the present fashion +of monthly magazines. He reviewed 'Pauline' favourably in its April +number--that is, as soon as it had appeared; and the young poet thus +received from him an introduction to what should have been, though it +probably was not, a large circle of intelligent readers. + +The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, in a +fantastic note appended to a copy of it, as 'the only remaining crab +of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.' This name is ill +bestowed upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning's +genius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, +so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, +its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these that Mr. +Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologetic +preface to its reprint in 1868. But these faults were partly due to his +conception of the character which he had tried to depict; and partly to +the inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex, in a succession +of mental and moral states, irrespectively of the conditions of time, +place, and circumstance which were involved in them. Only a very +powerful imagination could have inspired such an attempt. A still more +conspicuous effort of creative genius reveals itself at its close. The +moment chosen for the 'Confession' has been that of a supreme moral or +physical crisis. The exhaustion attendant on this is directly expressed +by the person who makes it, and may also be recognized in the vivid, yet +confusing, intensity of the reminiscences of which it consists. But +we are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis is that of +approaching death or incipient convalescence, or which character it +bears in the sufferer's mind; and the language used in the closing pages +is such as to suggest, without the slightest break in poetic continuity, +alternately the one conclusion and the other. This was intended by +Browning to assist his anonymity; and when the writer in 'Tait's +Magazine' spoke of the poem as a piece of pure bewilderment, he +expressed the natural judgment of the Philistine, while proving himself +such. If the notice by J. S. Mill, which this criticism excluded, was +indeed--as Mr. Browning always believed--much more sympathetic, I can +only record my astonishment; for there never was a large and cultivated +intelligence one can imagine less in harmony than his with the poetic +excesses, or even the poetic qualities, of 'Pauline'. But this is a +digression. + +Mr. Fox, though an accomplished critic, made very light of the artistic +blemishes of the work. His admiration for it was as generous as it was +genuine; and, having recognized in it the hand of a rising poet, it was +more congenial to him to hail that poet's advent than to register his +shortcomings. + + +'The poem,' he says, 'though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, has +truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with +the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of +genius.' + + +But it had also, in his mind, a distinguishing characteristic, which +raised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism. The article +continues: + + +'We have never read anything more purely confessional. The whole +composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers +of thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are +transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another.' + + +And we learn from the context that he accepted this confessional and +introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life--of +the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest +admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its +sentiment is warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense, +spiritual; but its intellectual activities are exercised on entirely +temporal ground, and this fact would generally be admitted as the +negation of spirituality in the religious sense of the word. No +difference, however, of opinion as to his judgment of 'Pauline' can +lessen our appreciation of Mr. Fox's encouraging kindness to its author. +No one who loved Mr. Browning in himself, or in his work, can read the +last lines of this review without a throb of affectionate gratitude +for the sympathy so ungrudgingly, and--as he wrote during his latest +years--so opportunely given: + + +'In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves +about such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for that +afterwards, when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had +many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown, +but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted 'Eureka!'' + + +Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known to +fame. One only discovered him in his obscurity. + +Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first +spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; and his admiration +was, in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances which +precluded in it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personal +interest or sympathy. But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our +history. + +I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning's +literary career, because the confidence which it gave him determined its +immediate future, if not its ultimate course--because, also, the poem +itself is more important to the understanding of his mind than perhaps +any other of his isolated works. It was the earliest of his dramatic +creations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct with himself; +and we may regard the 'Confession' as to a great extent his own, without +for an instant ignoring the imaginative element which necessarily and +certainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, his utterance is so +emphatic that we should feel it to be direct, even if we did not know it +to be true. The passage beginning, 'I am made up of an intensest life,' +conveys something more than the writer's actual psychological state. The +feverish desire of life became gradually modified into a more or less +active intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense of +an individual, self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him, +unconditioned existence, survived all the teachings of experience, and +often indeed unconsciously imposed itself upon them. + +I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment of +distinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation to the +'Sun-treader'. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, justly declares +that 'the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret mingling with +its exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful.' The +'exultation' is in the triumph of Shelley's rising fame; the regret, for +the lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness at an obscure +shrine. The double mood would have been characteristic of any period of +Mr. Browning's life. + +The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural +imagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy instead +of the direct poetic vision of the author's later work. + +'Pauline' received another and graceful tribute two months later than +the review. In an article of the 'Monthly Repository', and in the course +of a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passage +occurs: + + +'Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . They are +natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely +as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. 'Probatum est.' Last +autumn L----dropped a poem of Shelley's down there in the wood,* amongst +the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a +delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with +'Pauline' hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but of +pleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, +will follow.' + + * Mr. Browning's copy of 'Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent + to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic. + This and a bald though well-meant notice in the 'Athenaeum' + exhaust its literary history for this period.* + + * Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words, + Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract + from the 'Literary Gazette' of March 23, 1833: + + 'Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession', pp. 71. London, 1833. + Saunders and Otley. + + 'Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual, + and not a little unintelligible,--this is a dreamy volume, + without an object, and unfit for publication.' + +The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason +why it should be. But 'Pauline' was, from the first, little known or +discussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet's friends; and when, +twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it +in the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise that it had +been written by the author of 'Paracelsus'. + +The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning's +visit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russian +consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, and +being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that +he should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. +The letters written to his sister during this, as during every other +absence, were full of graphic description, and would have been a mine +of interest for the student of his imaginative life. They are, +unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences +of what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed +by some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless +monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion +rushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without +seeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, +and was fortunate enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-up +of the ice on the Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony +of drinking the first glass of water from it. He was absent about three +months. + +The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in his +earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired +for his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post of +activity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. +Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment on a +mission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wording +of the answer which his application received made him think for a moment +that it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned, +through an interview with the 'chief', that the place was otherwise +filled. + +In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the 'Monthly +Repository', extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The +earliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. +Browning's works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse's +article in the 'Century Magazine', December 1881; now part of his +'Personalia'. The second, beginning 'A king lived long ago', was to be +published, with alterations and additions, as one of 'Pippa's' songs. +'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' were reprinted +together in 'Bells and Pomegranates' under the heading of 'Madhouse +Cells'. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning 'Still ailing, Wind? +wilt be appeased or no?' afterwards introduced into the sixth section of +'James Lee's Wife'. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the +poet's future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most +essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems. + +This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, +of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends; +foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred +Domett. The magazine was called the 'Trifler', and published in monthly +numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money +on the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one +letter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled +'Some strictures on a late article in the 'Trifler'.' This boyish +production sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses +of some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'A +Dissertation on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine, +treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing +that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his +sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, +perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative +and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of +debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his +life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have +preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be +forgiven for quoting some passages from it. + + +For to be man is to be a debtor:--hinting but slightly at the grand and +primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard +for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with +nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists +have concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an +uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as +represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge +most commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,* +and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to +discharge--or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it-- + + He's most in _debt_ who lingers out the day, + Who dies betimes has less and less to pay. + +So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that + + Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c. + +as thou pratest, 'tis plain that they have willed on the very outset +to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man,--no barren and +inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive +rule of life,--that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor--aye, friend, +and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander,--no recreant as +thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true--remark, as +did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast 'paid the +_debt_ of nature'? Ha! I have thee 'beyond the rules', as one (a bailiff) +may say! + + * Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my + attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies + is identical with that expressed in these words of + 'Prospice', + + . . . in a minute pay glad life's arrears + Of pain, darkness, and cold. + +Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work of +writing 'Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, and which +occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr. +Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the following +letters show that the friend of 'Pauline' gave ready and efficient help +in the strangely difficult task of securing a publisher for the new +poem. + +The first is dated April 2, 1835. + + +Dear Sir,--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your +letter:--Sardanapalus 'could not go on multiplying kingdoms'--nor I +protestations--but I thank you very much. + +You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. I +merely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name and +fame among author-folk, besides he has himself written--as the Americans +say--'more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at.' So I hope we shall come +to terms. + +I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind +interest, and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have +as yet seen; indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, +for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise to prove +nobody after all--'nous verrons'. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and +obliged Robt. Browning. + + +On April 16 he wrote again as follows: + + +Dear Sir, + +Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time +in presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter +perused than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat--the +Moxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon:--'Artevelde' has not paid +expenses by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is 'popular at +Cambridge', and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, +some 300 only have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever +venture again, &c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, +&c. &c. + +I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, do +really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms--I shall +know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine. + +You will 'sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, you +must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have of +your criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely I +am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance bored you +sufficiently: but not a particle of your article has been rejected or +neglected by your observant humble servant, and very proud shall I be +if my new work bear in it the marks of the influence under which it was +undertaken--and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace +who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. I purposely +keep back the subject until you see my conception of its +capabilities--otherwise you would be planning a vase fit to give the +go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus would cut but a +sorry figure beside--hardly up to the ansa. + +But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive--and likely I hope +to do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a _fresh eye_ +going over its 4,000 lines--discovering blemishes of all sorts which +my one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, obscure +passages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is,--yet on the whole +I am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to be +allowed to read it some morning to you--for every rap o' the knuckles I +should get a clap o' the back, I know. + +I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I +conceive, but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two--so I +decide on trying the question with this:--I really shall _need_ your +notice, on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo; +there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and +scope are awfully radical--I am 'off' for ever with the other side, but +must by all means be 'on' with yours--a position once gained, worthier +works shall follow--therefore a certain writer* who meditated a notice +(it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on 'Pauline' in the 'Examiner', +must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, but in no case an +idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage (having previously +only dabbled in private theatricals) and bawl 'Hats off!' 'Down in +front!' &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium; and he may depend that +tho' my 'Now is the winter of our discontent' be rather awkward, yet +there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff--that I shall warm as +I get on, and finally wish 'Richmond at the bottom of the seas,' &c. in +the best style imaginable. + + * Mr. John Stuart Mill. + +Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and + +(The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.) + +Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we +understand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the +author than on that of its intrinsic worth. + +The title-page of 'Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmest +friendships of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young +French Royalist, one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri +on her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, spending his +summers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, really--as he +confessed to the Browning family--in the character of private agent of +communication between the royal exiles and their friends in France. He +was four years older than the poet, and of intellectual tastes which +created an immediate bond of union between them. In the course of one of +their conversations, he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible +subject for a poem; but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, +because it gave no room for the introduction of love: about which, he +added, every young man of their age thought he had something quite new +to say. Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would +write a poem on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was +dedicated, in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its +inspiration had been due. + +The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends +did not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, Mr. +Browning heard a voice behind him crying, 'Robert!' He turned, and +there was 'Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married; the Count--then, I +believe, Marquis--to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. Mrs. Browning, to +whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.* + + * A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning + became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, and in + 1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, to + both of which learned bodies his friend belonged. + +Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing +produced a character--at all events a history--which, according +to recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality than any +conception which had until then been formed of it. He had carefully +collected all the known facts of the great discoverer's life, and +interpreted them with a sympathy which was no less an intuition of their +truth than a reflection of his own genius upon them. We are enabled +in some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled 'Paracelsus, the +Reformer of Medicine', written by Dr. Edward Berdoe for the Browning +Society, and read at its October meeting in 1888; and in the difficulty +which exists for most of us of verifying the historical data of +Mr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, as well as an +interesting comment upon it. + +Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus +without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his +day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes +in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim +who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the +poem. The passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparently +another term for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of all +mediaeval occultism, as of all modern theosophy--of a soul-power equally +operative in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in the +consciousness of man. + +The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparently +conflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience, +of the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit, among the things of +Nature, of an ultimate of knowledge, not contained, even in fragments, +in her isolated truths; the sense of failure which haunts his most +valuable attainments; his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic, +when the divine has failed; the ascetic exaltation in which he begins +his career; the sudden awakening to the spiritual sterility which has +been consequent on it; all these find their place, if not always their +counterpart, in the real life. + +The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards himself +and the world, are not, however, quite consonant with the alleged facts. +They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer of the world of abstract +thought than to a mystical scientist pursuing the secret of existence. +He preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes, a loftiness of tone and a +unity of intention, difficult to connect, even in fancy, with the real +man, in whom the inherited superstitions and the prognostics of true +science must often have clashed with each other. Dr. Berdoe's picture +of the 'Reformer' drawn more directly from history, conveys this double +impression. Mr. Browning has rendered him more simple by, as it were, +recasting him in the atmosphere of a more modern time, and of his own +intellectual life. This poem still, therefore, belongs to the same group +as 'Pauline', though, as an effort of dramatic creation, superior to it. + +We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise in the deathbed +revelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story. It supplies a +fitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus, than to those +of the historical, whether or not its utterance was within the compass +of historical probability, as Dr. Berdoe believes. In any case it was +the direct product of Mr. Browning's mind, and expressed what was to +be his permanent conviction. It might then have been an echo of German +pantheistic philosophies. From the point of view of science--of modern +science at least--it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one for +whom evolution could never mean less or more than a divine creation +operating on this progressive plan. + +The more striking, perhaps, for its personal quality are the evidences +of imaginative sympathy, even direct human insight, in which the poem +abounds. Festus is, indeed, an essentially human creature: the +man--it might have been the woman--of unambitious intellect and large +intelligence of the heart, in whom so many among us have found comfort +and help. We often feel, in reading 'Pauline', that the poet in it was +older than the man. The impression is more strongly and more definitely +conveyed by this second work, which has none of the intellectual +crudeness of 'Pauline', though it still belongs to an early phase of the +author's intellectual life. Not only its mental, but its moral maturity, +seems so much in advance of his uncompleted twenty-third year. + +To the first edition of 'Paracelsus' was affixed a preface, now long +discarded, but which acquires fresh interest in a retrospect of the +author's completed work; for it lays down the constant principle +of dramatic creation by which that work was to be inspired. It also +anticipates probable criticism of the artistic form which on this, and +so many subsequent occasions, he selected for it. + + +'I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset--mistaking +my performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in +common--judge it by principles on which it was never moulded, and +subject it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. I +therefore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably more +novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers whose +aim it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions, +by the operation of persons and events; and that, instead of having +recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the +crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely +the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency +by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible +in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether +excluded: and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not +a drama: the canons of the drama are well known, and I cannot but think +that, inasmuch as they have immediate regard to stage representation, +the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such only so long as +the purpose for which they were at first instituted is kept in view. I +do not very well understand what is called a Dramatic Poem, wherein all +those restrictions only submitted to on account of compensating good +in the original scheme are scrupulously retained, as though for some +special fitness in themselves--and all new facilities placed at an +author's disposal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously rejected. +. . .' + + +Mr. Fox reviewed this also in the 'Monthly Repository'. The article +might be obtained through the kindness of Mrs. Bridell-Fox; but it will +be sufficient for my purpose to refer to its closing paragraph, as given +by her in the 'Argosy' of February 1890. It was a final expression of +what the writer regarded as the fitting intellectual attitude towards a +rising poet, whose aims and methods lay so far beyond the range of +the conventional rules of poetry. The great event in the history of +'Paracelsus' was John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner'. Mr. +Forster had recently come to town. He could barely have heard Mr. +Browning's name, and, as he afterwards told him, was perplexed in +reading the poem by the question of whether its author was an old or a +young man; but he knew that a writer in the 'Athenaeum' had called it +rubbish, and he had taken it up as a probable subject for a piece of +slashing criticism. What he did write can scarcely be defined as praise. +It was the simple, ungrudging admission of the unequivocal power, as +well as brilliant promise, which he recognized in the work. This +mutual experience was the introduction to a long and, certainly on Mr. +Browning's part, a sincere friendship. + + + + +Chapter 6 + +1835-1838 + +Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars--Renewed Intercourse with the +second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather--Reuben Browning--William +Shergold Browning--Visitors at Hatcham--Thomas Carlyle--Social Life--New +Friends and Acquaintance--Introduction to Macready--New Year's Eve +at Elm Place--Introduction to John Forster--Miss Fanny Haworth--Miss +Martineau--Serjeant Talfourd--The 'Ion' Supper--'Strafford'--Relations +with Macready--Performance of 'Strafford'--Letters concerning it +from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower--Personal Glimpses of Robert +Browning--Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration--Relation of 'Strafford' +to 'Sordello'--Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'. + + + +It was soon after this time, though the exact date cannot be recalled, +that the Browning family moved from Camberwell to Hatcham. Some such +change had long been in contemplation, for their house was now too +small; and the finding one more suitable, in the latter place, had +decided the question. The new home possessed great attractions. The +long, low rooms of its upper storey supplied abundant accommodation for +the elder Mr. Browning's six thousand books. Mrs. Browning was suffering +greatly from her chronic ailment, neuralgia; and the large garden, +opening on to the Surrey hills, promised her all the benefits of country +air. There were a coach-house and stable, which, by a curious, +probably old-fashioned, arrangement, formed part of the house, and were +accessible from it. Here the 'good horse', York, was eventually put up; +and near this, in the garden, the poet soon had another though humbler +friend in the person of a toad, which became so much attached to him +that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, where it +burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a pinch of +gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, allow +its head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that loving +glance of the soft full eyes which Mr. Browning has recalled in one of +the poems of 'Asolando'. + +This change of residence brought the grandfather's second family, for +the first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. +Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms with +his stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for this +forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves +and two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart +for frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and, +in order to be near her relations, she also came to Hatcham, and +established herself there in close neighbourhood to them. She had then +with her only a son and a daughter, those known to the poet's friends +as Uncle Reuben and Aunt Jemima; respectively nine years, and one year, +older than he. 'Aunt Jemima' married not long afterwards, and is chiefly +remembered as having been very amiable, and, in early youth, to use +her nephew's words, 'as beautiful as the day;' but kindly, merry +'Uncle Reuben', then clerk in the Rothschilds' London bank,* became a +conspicuous member of the family circle. This does not mean that the +poet was ever indebted to him for pecuniary help; and it is desirable +that this should be understood, since it has been confidently asserted +that he was so. So long as he was dependent at all, he depended +exclusively on his father. Even the use of his uncle's horse, which +might have been accepted as a friendly concession on Mr. Reuben's part, +did not really represent one. The animal stood, as I have said, in Mr. +Browning's stable, and it was groomed by his gardener. The promise of +these conveniences had induced Reuben Browning to buy a horse instead of +continuing to hire one. He could only ride it on a few days of the week, +and it was rather a gain than a loss to him that so good a horseman as +his nephew should exercise it during the interval. + + * This uncle's name, and his business relations with the + great Jewish firm, have contributed to the mistaken theory + of the poet's descent. + +Uncle Reuben was not a great appreciator of poetry--at all events of +his nephew's; and an irreverent remark on 'Sordello', imputed to a more +eminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, from +him. But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that he was +a good linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. He +was also, apparently, an accomplished classic. Lord Beaconsfield is said +to have declared that the inscription on a silver inkstand, presented to +the daughter of Lionel Rothschild on her marriage, by the clerks at New +Court, 'was the most appropriate thing he had ever come across;' and +that whoever had selected it must be one of the first Latin scholars of +the day. It was Mr. Reuben Browning. + +Another favourite uncle was William Shergold Browning, though less +intimate with his nephew and niece than he would have become if he had +not married while they were still children, and settled in Paris, where +his father's interest had placed him in the Rothschild house. He is +known by his 'History of the Huguenots', a work, we are told, 'full of +research, with a reference to contemporary literature for almost every +occurrence mentioned or referred to.' He also wrote the 'Provost of +Paris', and 'Hoel Morven', historical novels, and 'Leisure Hours', a +collection of miscellanies; and was a contributor for some years to +the 'Gentleman's Magazine'. It was chiefly from this uncle that Miss +Browning and her brother heard the now often-repeated stories of their +probable ancestors, Micaiah Browning, who distinguished himself at the +siege of Derry, and that commander of the ship 'Holy Ghost' who conveyed +Henry V. to France before the battle of Agincourt, and received the +coat-of-arms, with its emblematic waves, in reward for his service. +Robert Browning was also indebted to him for the acquaintance of M. de +Ripert-Monclar; for he was on friendly terms with the uncle of the young +count, the Marquis de Fortia, a learned man and member of the Institut, +and gave a letter of introduction--actually, I believe, to his brother +Reuben--at the Marquis's request.* + + * A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning, + graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, and is + now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name + first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son, + while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment, + connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate + with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much. + +The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in his high estimate +of the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. On one occasion he took +his brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. An earlier and much +attached friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, cousin to the noted +physician Dr. Blundell. He enabled the young Robert, whom he knew from +the age of sixteen, to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and this +aroused in him a considerable interest in the sciences connected with +medicine, though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge of +either disease or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into his +life. A Captain Lloyd is indirectly associated with 'The Flight of the +Duchess'. That poem was not completed according to its original plan; +and it was the always welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentleman +which arrested its completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered how the +click of the garden gate, and the sight of the familiar figure advancing +towards the house, had broken in upon his work and dispelled its first +inspiration. + +The appearance of 'Paracelsus' did not give the young poet his just +place in popular judgment and public esteem. A generation was to pass +before this was conceded to him. But it compelled his recognition by the +leading or rising literary men of the day; and a fuller and more varied +social life now opened before him. The names of Serjeant Talfourd, +Horne, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall (Procter), Monckton Milnes (Lord +Houghton), Eliot Warburton, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Walter Savage +Landor, represent, with that of Forster, some of the acquaintances made, +or the friendships begun, at this period. Prominent among the friends +that were to be, was also Archer Gurney, well known in later life as the +Rev. Archer Gurney, and chaplain to the British embassy in Paris. +His sympathies were at present largely absorbed by politics. He was +contesting the representation of some county, on the Conservative side; +but he took a very vivid interest in Mr. Browning's poems; and this +perhaps fixes the beginning of the intimacy at a somewhat later date; +since a pretty story by which it was illustrated connects itself with +the publication of 'Bells and Pomegranates'. He himself wrote dramas and +poems. Sir John, afterwards Lord, Hanmer was also much attracted by the +young poet, who spent a pleasant week with him at Bettisfield Park. He +was the author of a volume entitled 'Fra Cipollo and other Poems', from +which the motto of 'Colombe's Birthday' was subsequently taken. + +The friends, old and new, met in the informal manner of those days, at +afternoon dinners, or later suppers, at the houses of Mr. Fox, Serjeant +Talfourd, and, as we shall see, Mr. Macready; and Mr. Fox's daughter, +then only a little girl, but intelligent and observant for her years, +well remembers the pleasant gatherings at which she was allowed to +assist, when first performances of plays, or first readings of plays and +poems, had brought some of the younger and more ardent spirits together. +Miss Flower, also, takes her place in the literary group. Her sister had +married in 1834, and left her free to live for her own pursuits and her +own friends; and Mr. Browning must have seen more of her then than was +possible in his boyish days. + +None, however, of these intimacies were, at the time, so important to +him as that formed with the great actor Macready. They were introduced +to each other by Mr. Fox early in the winter of 1835-6; the meeting is +thus chronicled in Macready's diary, November 27.* + + * 'Macready's Reminiscences', edited by Sir Frederick Pollock; + 1875. + + +'Went from chambers to dine with Rev. William Fox, Bayswater. . . . Mr. +Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus', came in after dinner; I was +very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence. . . . +I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve my +acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the +proposal, wished to send me his book; we exchanged cards and parted.' + + +On December 7 he writes: + + +'Read 'Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry of +thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer can +scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. . . .' + + +He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, for +the last evening of the year; and again refers to him under date of +December 31. + + +'. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning, +and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; his +simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions from +all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man +I ever saw.' + + +This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together for the +first time. The journey to Elstree was then performed by coach, and the +two young men met at the 'Blue Posts', where, with one or more of Mr. +Macready's other guests, they waited for the coach to start. They eyed +each other with interest, both being striking in their way, and +neither knowing who the other was. When the introduction took place at +Macready's house, Mr. Forster supplemented it by saying: 'Did you see a +little notice of you I wrote in the 'Examiner'?' The two names will +now be constantly associated in Macready's diary, which, except for +Mr. Browning's own casual utterances, is almost our only record of his +literary and social life during the next two years. + +It was at Elm Place that Mr. Browning first met Miss Euphrasia Fanny +Haworth, then a neighbour of Mr. Macready, residing with her mother at +Barham Lodge. Miss Haworth was still a young woman, but her love and +talent for art and literature made her a fitting member of the genial +circle to which Mr. Browning belonged; and she and the poet soon became +fast friends. Her first name appears as 'Eyebright' in 'Sordello'. His +letters to her, returned after her death by her brother, Mr. Frederick +Haworth, supply valuable records of his experiences and of his feelings +at one very interesting, and one deeply sorrowful, period of his +history. She was a thoroughly kindly, as well as gifted woman, and much +appreciated by those of the poet's friends who knew her as a resident in +London during her last years. A portrait which she took of him in 1874 +is considered by some persons very good. + +At about this time also, and probably through Miss Haworth, he became +acquainted with Miss Martineau. + +Soon after his introduction to Macready, if not before, Mr. Browning +became busy with the thought of writing for the stage. The diary has +this entry for February 16, 1836: + + +'Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot of a tragedy, +which Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. He said that +I had _bit_ him by my performance of Othello, and I told him I hoped I +should make the blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for the +miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I have +endured in my profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit +of poetry whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded +drama. May it be!' + + +But Narses was abandoned, and the more serious inspiration and more +definite motive were to come later. They connect themselves with one +of the pleasant social occurrences which must have lived in the young +poet's memory. On May 26 'Ion' had been performed for the first time and +with great success, Mr. Macready sustaining the principal part; and the +great actor and a number of their common friends had met at supper at +Serjeant Talfourd's house to celebrate the occasion. The party included +Wordsworth and Landor, both of whom Mr. Browning then met for the first +time. Toasts flew right and left. Mr. Browning's health was proposed +by Serjeant Talfourd as that of the youngest poet of England, and +Wordsworth responded to the appeal with very kindly courtesy. The +conversation afterwards turned upon plays, and Macready, who had ignored +a half-joking question of Miss Mitford, whether, if she wrote one, he +would act in it, overtook Browning as they were leaving the house, and +said, 'Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America.' The +reply was, 'Shall it be historical and English; what do you say to a +drama on Strafford?' + +This ready response on the poet's part showed that Strafford, as a +dramatic subject, had been occupying his thoughts. The subject was in +the air, because Forster was then bringing out a life of that statesman, +with others belonging to the same period. It was more than in the air, +so far as Browning was concerned, because his friend had been disabled, +either through sickness or sorrow, from finishing this volume by the +appointed time, and he, as well he might, had largely helped him in its +completion. It was, however, not till August 3 that Macready wrote in +his diary: + + +'Forster told me that Browning had fixed on Strafford for the subject of +a tragedy; he could not have hit upon one that I could have more readily +concurred in.' + + +A previous entry of May 30, the occasion of which is only implied, shows +with how high an estimate of Mr. Browning's intellectual importance +Macready's professional relations to him began. + + +'Arriving at chambers, I found a note from Browning. What can I say upon +it? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and cares +of years: it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest, +honour I have through life received.' + + +The estimate maintained itself in reference to the value of Mr. +Browning's work, since he wrote on March 13, 1837: + + +'Read before dinner a few pages of 'Paracelsus', which raises my wonder +the more I read it. . . . Looked over two plays, which it was not +possible to read, hardly as I tried. . . . Read some scenes in +'Strafford', which restore one to the world of sense and feeling once +again.' + + +But as the day of the performance drew near, he became at once more +anxious and more critical. An entry of April 28 comments somewhat +sharply on the dramatic faults of 'Strafford', besides declaring the +writer's belief that the only chance for it is in the acting, which, 'by +possibility, might carry it to the end without disapprobation,' though +he dares not hope without opposition. It is quite conceivable that his +first complete study of the play, and first rehearsal of it, brought to +light deficiencies which had previously escaped him; but so complete +a change of sentiment points also to private causes of uneasiness and +irritation; and, perhaps, to the knowledge that its being saved by +collective good acting was out of the question. + +'Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on May 1. Mr. +Browning wrote to Mr. Fox after one of the last rehearsals: + + +May Day, Lincoln's Inn Fields. + +Dear Sir,--All my endeavours to procure a copy before this morning have +been fruitless. I send the first book of the first bundle. _Pray_ look +over it--the alterations to-night will be considerable. The complexion +of the piece is, I grieve to say, 'perfect gallows' just now--our _King_, +Mr. Dale, being . . . but you'll see him, and, I fear, not much applaud. +Your unworthy son, in things literary, Robert Browning. + +P.S. (in pencil).--A most unnecessary desire, but urged on me by Messrs. +Longman: no notice on Str. in to-night's True Sun,* lest the other +papers be jealous!!! + + * Mr. Fox reviewed 'Strafford' in the 'True Sun'. + +A second letter, undated, but evidently written a day or two later, +refers to the promised notice, which had then appeared. + + +Tuesday Night. + +No words can express my feelings: I happen to be much annoyed and +unwell--but your most generous notice has almost made 'my soul well and +happy now.' + +I thank you, my most kind, most constant friend, from my heart for your +goodness--which is brave enough, just now. I am ever and increasingly +yours, Robert Browning. + +You will be glad to see me on the earliest occasion, will you not? I +shall certainly come. + + +A letter from Miss Flower to Miss Sarah Fox (sister to the Rev. William +Fox), at Norwich, contains the following passage, which evidently +continues a chapter of London news: + + +'Then 'Strafford'; were you not pleased to hear of the success of one +you must, I think, remember a very little boy, years ago. If not, you +have often heard us speak of Robert Browning: and it is a great deal to +have accomplished a successful tragedy, although he seems a good deal +annoyed at the go of things behind the scenes, and declares he will +never write a play again, as long as he lives. You have no idea of +the ignorance and obstinacy of the whole set, with here and there an +exception; think of his having to write out the meaning of the word +'impeachment', as some of them thought it meant 'poaching'.' + + +On the first night, indeed, the fate of 'Strafford' hung in the balance; +it was saved by Macready and Miss Helen Faucit. After this they must +have been better supported, as it was received on the second night +with enthusiasm by a full house. The catastrophe came after the fifth +performance, with the desertion of the actor who had sustained the +part of Pym. We cannot now judge whether, even under favourable +circumstances, the play would have had as long a run as was intended; +but the casting vote in favour of this view is given by the conduct of +Mr. Osbaldistone, the manager, when it was submitted to him. The diary +says, March 30, that he caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produce +it without delay. The terms he offered to the author must also have been +considered favourable in those days. + +The play was published in April by Longman, this time not at the +author's expense; but it brought no return either to him or to his +publisher. It was dedicated 'in all affectionate admiration' to William +C. Macready. + +We gain some personal glimpses of the Browning of 1835-6; one especially +through Mrs. Bridell-Fox, who thus describes her first meeting with him: + + +'I remember . . . when Mr. Browning entered the drawing-room, with a +quick light step; and on hearing from me that my father was out, and +in fact that nobody was at home but myself, he said: "It's my birthday +to-day; I'll wait till they come in," and sitting down to the piano, +he added: "If it won't disturb you, I'll play till they do." And as he +turned to the instrument, the bells of some neighbouring church suddenly +burst out with a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, as +if in response to the remark that it was his birthday. He was then slim +and dark, and very handsome; and--may I hint it--just a trifle of a +dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things: quite "the +glass of fashion and the mould of form." But full of ambition, eager for +success, eager for fame, and, what's more, determined to conquer fame +and to achieve success.' + + +I do not think his memory ever taxed him with foppishness, though he may +have had the innocent personal vanity of an attractive young man at his +first period of much seeing and being seen; but all we know of him +at that time bears out the impression Mrs. Fox conveys, of a joyous, +artless confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quickly +reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences +had freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. The +self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this +side it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for +kindness, and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other +men. His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in this +way. He was very attractive to women and, as we have seen, warmly loved +by very various types of men; but, except in its poetic sense, his +emotional nature was by no means then in the ascendant: a fact difficult +to realize when we remember the passion of his childhood's love for +mother and home, and the new and deep capabilities of affection to be +developed in future days. The poet's soul in him was feeling its wings; +the realities of life had not yet begun to weight them. + +We see him again at the 'Ion' supper, in the grace and modesty with +which he received the honours then adjudged to him. The testimony has +been said to come from Miss Mitford, but may easily have been supplied +by Miss Haworth, who was also present on this occasion. + +Mr. Browning's impulse towards play-writing had not, as we have seen, +begun with 'Strafford'. It was still very far from being exhausted. And +though he had struck out for himself another line of dramatic activity, +his love for the higher theatrical life, and the legitimate inducements +of the more lucrative and not necessarily less noble form of +composition, might ultimately in some degree have prevailed with him if +circumstances had been such as to educate his theatrical capabilities, +and to reward them. His first acted drama was, however, an interlude to +the production of the important group of poems which was to be completed +by 'Sordello'; and he alludes to this later work in an also discarded +preface to 'Strafford', as one on which he had for some time been +engaged. He even characterizes the Tragedy as an attempt 'to freshen +a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch.' +'Sordello' again occupied him during the remainder of 1837 and the +beginning of 1838; and by the spring of this year he must have been +thankful to vary the scene and mode of his labours by means of a first +visit to Italy. He announces his impending journey, with its immediate +plan and purpose, in the following note: + + +To John Robertson, Esq. + +Good Friday, 1838. + +Dear Sir,--I was not fortunate enough to find you the day before +yesterday--and must tell you very hurriedly that I sail this morning +for Venice--intending to finish my poem among the scenes it describes. +I shall have your good wishes I know. Believe me, in return, Dear sir, +Yours faithfully and obliged, Robert Browning. + + +Mr. John Robertson had influence with the 'Westminster Review', either +as editor, or member of its staff. He had been introduced to Mr. +Browning by Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of 'Paracelsus', +had promised careful attention for 'Sordello'; but, when the time +approached, he made conditions of early reading, &c., which Mr. Browning +thought so unfair towards other magazines that he refused to fulfil +them. He lost his review, and the goodwill of its intending writer; and +even Miss Martineau was ever afterwards cooler towards him, though his +attitude in the matter had been in some degree prompted by a chivalrous +partisanship for her. + + + + +Chapter 7 + +1838-1841 + +First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr. John +Kenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bells and +Pomegranates'. + + + +Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the 'Norham +Castle', a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himself +the only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, and some +characteristic personal details, are given in the following letter to +Miss Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written before that +year's summer had closed. + + +Tuesday Evening. + +Dear Miss Haworth,--Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom and notice the +clear little honey-drop depending from every flower. I have just found +it out to my no small satisfaction,--a bee's breakfast. I only answer +for the long-blossomed sort, though,--indeed, for this plant in my room. +Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. All this while I forget that you +will perhaps never guess the good of the discovery: I have, you are to +know, such a love for flowers and leaves--some leaves--that I every +now and then, in an impatience at being able to possess myself of them +thoroughly, to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent,--bite +them to bits--so there will be some sense in that. How I remember the +flowers--even grasses--of places I have seen! Some one flower or weed, I +should say, that gets some strangehow connected with them. + +Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park, +for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland. + +Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receive +last week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write,--for none +of your written reasons, however. You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, if +the fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent (except +a scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' the Straits of +Gibraltar)--but I did hammer out some four, two of which are addressed +to you, two to the Queen*--the whole to go in Book III--perhaps. I +called you 'Eyebright'--meaning a simple and sad sort of translation +of "Euphrasia" into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, or +Fanny, was--and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there is +anything in them to care for, good or bad. Shall I say 'Eyebright'? + + * I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen. + +I was disappointed in one thing, Canova. + +What companions should I have? + +The story of the ship must have reached you 'with a difference' as +Ophelia says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it to +Forster, I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over +&c., &c., &c.--As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captain +woke me one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keel +uppermost half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to some +floating canvas, and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, and +the little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. Our +men made the wreck fast in high glee at having 'new trousers out of the +sails,' and quite sure she was a French boat, broken from her moorings +at Algiers, close by. Ropes were next hove (hang this sea-talk!) round +her stanchions, and after a quarter of an hour's pushing at the capstan, +the vessel righted suddenly, one dead body floating out; five more were +in the forecastle, and had probably been there a month under a blazing +African sun--don't imagine the wretched state of things. They were, +these six, the 'watch below'--(I give you the result of the day's +observation)--the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard at +first. One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was a +smuggler bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionate +guns, taking up the whole deck, which was convex and--nay, look you! +(a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck is here +introduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square the place +where the bodies lay. (All the 'bulwarks' or sides of the top, carried +away by the waves.) Well, the sailors covered up the hatchway, broke up +the aft-deck, hauled up tobacco and cigars, such heaps of them, and +then bale after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, till the +captain was half-frightened--he would get at the ship's papers, he said; +so these poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, and pitched into the +sea, the very sailors calling to each other to 'cover the faces',--no +papers of importance were found, however, but fifteen swords, powder +and ball enough for a dozen such boats, and bundles of cotton, &c., that +would have taken a day to get out, but the captain vowed that after five +o'clock she should be cut adrift: accordingly she was cast loose, not a +third of her cargo having been touched; and you hardly can conceive the +strange sight when the battered hulk turned round, actually, and +looked at us, and then reeled off, like a mutilated creature from some +scoundrel French surgeon's lecture-table, into the most gorgeous and +lavish sunset in the world: there; only thank me for not taking you at +your word, and giving you the whole 'story'.--'What I did?' I went to +Trieste, then Venice--then through Treviso and Bassano to the mountains, +delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you will see. Then to +Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the +Tyrol), Munich, Salzburg in Franconia, Frankfort and Mayence; down the +Rhine to Cologne, then to Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Antwerp--then home. +Shall you come to town, anywhere near town, soon? I shall be off again +as soon as my book is out, whenever that will be. + +I never read that book of Miss Martineau's, so can't understand what +you mean. Macready is looking well; I just saw him the other day for a +minute after the play; his Kitely was Kitely--superb from his flat cap +down to his shining shoes. I saw very few Italians, 'to know', that is. +Those I did see I liked. Your friend Pepoli has been lecturing here, has +he not? + +I shall be vexed if you don't write soon, a long Elstree letter. What +are you doing, writing--drawing? Ever yours truly R. B. To Miss Haworth, +Barham Lodge, Elstree. + + +Miss Browning's account of this experience, supplied from memory of her +brother's letters and conversations, contains some vivid supplementary +details. The drifting away of the wreck put probably no effective +distance between it and the ship; hence the necessity of 'sailing away' +from it. + + +'Of the dead pirates, one had his hands clasped as if praying; another, +a severe gash in his head. The captain burnt disinfectants and blew +gunpowder, before venturing on board, but even then, he, a powerful man, +turned very sick with the smell and sight. They stayed one whole day +by the side, but the sailors, in spite of orders, began to plunder the +cigars, &c. The captain said privately to Robert, "I cannot restrain my +men, and they will bring the plague into our ship, so I mean quietly in +the night to sail away." Robert took two cutlasses and a dagger; they +were of the coarsest workmanship, intended for use. At the end of one of +the sheaths was a heavy bullet, so that it could be used as a sling. +The day after, to their great relief, a heavy rain fell and cleansed the +ship. Captain Davidson reported the sight of the wreck and its condition +as soon as he arrived at Trieste.' + + +Miss Browning also relates that the weather was stormy in the Bay of +Biscay, and for the first fortnight her brother suffered terribly. The +captain supported him on to the deck as they passed through the Straits +of Gibraltar, that he might not lose the sight. He recovered, as we +know, sufficiently to write 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent +to Aix'; but we can imagine in what revulsion of feeling towards firm +land and healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born in +him. The poem was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simboli +trasportati al Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his; +and, in spite of perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, the pencil +dints are still visible. The little poem 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' +was written at the same time, and in the same manner. + +By the time they reached Trieste, the captain, a rough north-countryman, +had become so attached to Mr. Browning that he offered him a free +passage to Constantinople; and after they had parted, carefully +preserved, by way of remembrance, a pair of very old gloves worn by him +on deck. Mr. Browning might, on such an occasion, have dispensed with +gloves altogether; but it was one of his peculiarities that he could +never endure to be out of doors with uncovered hands. The captain also +showed his friendly feeling on his return to England by bringing to Miss +Browning, whom he had heard of through her brother, a present of six +bottles of attar of roses. + +The inspirations of Asolo and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'In +a Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequent +vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism which +Asolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself at a much +later time. + +A second letter to Miss Haworth is undated, but may have been written at +any period of this or the ensuing year. + + +I have received, a couple of weeks since, a present--an album large and +gaping, and as Cibber's Richard says of the 'fair Elizabeth': 'My +heart is empty--she shall fill it'--so say I (impudently?) of my grand +trouble-table, which holds a sketch or two by my fine fellow Monclar, +one lithograph--his own face of faces,--'all the rest was amethyst.' F. +H. everywhere! not a soul beside 'in the chrystal silence there,' and +it locks, this album; now, don't shower drawings on M., who has so many +advantages over me as it is: or at least don't bid _me_ of all others say +what he is to have. + +The 'Master' is somebody you don't know, W. J. Fox, a magnificent and +poetical nature, who used to write in reviews when I was a boy, and +to whom my verses, a bookful, written at the ripe age of twelve and +thirteen, were shown: which verses he praised not a little; which praise +comforted me not a little. Then I lost sight of him for years and +years; then I published _anonymously_ a little poem--which he, to my +inexpressible delight, praised and expounded in a gallant article in a +magazine of which he was the editor; then I found him out again; he got +a publisher for 'Paracelsus' (I read it to him in manuscript) and is in +short 'my literary father'. Pretty nearly the same thing did he for +Miss Martineau, as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the +'talk', table-talk was about--I think she must have told you the results +of the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, and that day's, the +dinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. She is to give me advice +about my worldly concerns, and not before I need it! + +I cannot say or sing the pleasure your way of writing gives me--do go +on, and tell me all sorts of things, 'the story' for a beginning; but +your moralisings on 'your age' and the rest, are--now what _are_ they? +not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about: they are +'Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia), for teaching me that word. + +I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar +looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; +he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he _has_ taken!) and very +like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . . + +Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M----to help +you! I am going to begin the finishing 'Sordello'--and to begin thinking +a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms on +'Strafford') and I want to have _another_ tragedy in prospect, I write +best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learned +that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on my +story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw it +up. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrast +with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many +half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough +self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus, +or a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling? +. . . + + +The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and +'The Return of the Druses'. + +This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work; +it is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto +occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's +'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even +imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experience +was still distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he was +nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted +with Mr. Kenyon. + +When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by a +pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, asked +leave to address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert? +had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was he +still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say that +Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, and though they had +lost sight of each other in after-life, he had never forgotten his +old playmate, but even alluded to him in a little book which he had +published a few years before.* + + * The volume is entitled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833), + and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays, + and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted. + +The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered a +schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is his +face,' and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized +that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon +proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in a +letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was one +of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy for excellence +of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, of Southey, of +Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with most of my contemporaries +of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house that the poet saw most of +Wordsworth, who always stayed there when he came to town. + +In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by far +the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. This seemed, indeed, +a condition of its peculiar character. It had lain much deeper in the +author's mind than the various slighter works which were thrown off in +the course of its inception. We know from the preface to 'Strafford' +that it must have been begun soon after 'Paracelsus'. Its plan may have +belonged to a still earlier date; for it connects itself with 'Pauline' +as the history of a poetic soul; with both the earlier poems, as the +manifestation of the self-conscious spiritual ambitions which were +involved in that history. This first imaginative mood was also +outgrowing itself in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedies +written before the conclusion of 'Sordello' impress us as the product of +a different mental state--as the work of a more balanced imagination and +a more mature mind. + +It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet became +embodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical character +of the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginative +psychological treatment, or whether the circumstances among which he +moved seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type. +The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his +testimony to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue. +That period of Italian history must also have assumed, if it did not +already possess, a great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, since he +studied no less than thirty works upon it, which were to contribute +little more to his dramatic picture than what he calls 'decoration', or +'background'. But the one guide which he has given us to the reading of +the poem is his assertion that its historical circumstance is only to +be regarded as background; and the extent to which he identified himself +with the figure of Sordello has been proved by his continued belief that +its prominence was throughout maintained. He could still declare, +so late as 1863, in his preface to the reprint of the work, that his +'stress' in writing it had lain 'on the incidents in the development of +a soul, little else' being to his mind 'worth study'. I cannot therefore +help thinking that recent investigations of the life and character of +the actual poet, however in themselves praiseworthy and interesting, +have been often in some degree a mistake; because, directly or +indirectly, they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to an historical +reality, which his author had grasped, as far as was then possible, but +to which he was never intended to conform. + +Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, +the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other +men--the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower into +the larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and this +takes place in accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief that +poetry is the appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; that the true +poet must be their exponent. The work is thus obviously, in point of +moral utterance, an advance on 'Pauline'. Its metaphysics are, +also, more distinctly formulated than those of either 'Pauline' or +'Paracelsus'; and the frequent use of the term Will in its metaphysical +sense so strongly points to German associations that it is difficult to +realize their absence, then and always, from Mr. Browning's mind. But +he was emphatic in his assurance that he knew neither the German +philosophers nor their reflection in Coleridge, who would have seemed a +likely medium between them and him. Miss Martineau once said to him +that he had no need to study German thought, since his mind was German +enough--by which she possibly meant too German--already. + +The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the +picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for +this very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr. +Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not preclude +the consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopular +character had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, some years +ago, that 'Sordello' was represented in a collection of descriptive +passages which a friend of his was proposing to make. 'There is a great +deal of that in it,' he said, 'and it has always been overlooked.' + + * The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I + believe, by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of 'The Ring and + the Book', and I do not like to use it without saying so. + But it is one of those which must have spontaneously + suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's + readers. + +It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added +themselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the +reason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some +comments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, then +quite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth, +who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without making +quite clear to him the source from which they sprang. He took the +criticism much more seriously than it deserved, and condensed the +language of this his next important publication into what was nearly its +present form. + +In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr. +Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in the +sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be. +'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of +'Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspired +by every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (real +or imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already +lost the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for the +Browning of 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poem +were in many respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Passes', published one +year later, the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has +entered on the inheritance of the other. + +Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls +this 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the quality +of humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a strongly +marked philosophy of life--or more properly, of association--from +which its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of these +evidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish +in personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower +written at about the same time. + + * These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from + Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'. + + +Monday night, March 9 (? 1841). + +My dear Miss Flower,--I have this moment received your very kind +note--of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are +somewhat lightened already (confess--nay 'confess' is vile--you will +be rejoiced to holla from the house-top)--will go on, or rather go +off, lightening, and will be--oh, where _will_ they be half a dozen years +hence? + +Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you and +Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects--mean +to song-write, play-write forthwith,--and, believe me, dear Miss Flower, +Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning. + +By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'--could we not make some arrangement +about it? The lyrics _want_ your music--five or six in all--how say you? +When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode--but 'all +goeth by God's Will.' + + +The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem, +inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first two +verses: + + +On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Passes'. + +(Query--Passes what?--the critic's comprehension.) + + Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, + Automatons of which the world is full, + Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, + That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, + Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, + A mighty truth now wondrously displayed. + + A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, + Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong + The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along + His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies-- + Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, + Against a mountain he can neither double + Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, + Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he + Takes it into his horny head to swear + There's no such thing as any mountain there. + +The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; but +these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must have +made them a welcome tribute to friendship. + +There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Passes'; +it is less surprising that there should have been very little of +'Sordello'. Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of +earnest appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable +notice of these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, in +Dr. Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poems +which was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poets +and painters of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on +a period of general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of his +life, and much that has since become most deservedly popular in his +work. + +'Pippa Passes' had appeared as the first instalment of 'Bells and +Pomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. This +poem, and the two tragedies, 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The +Return of the Druses'--first christened 'Mansoor, the Hierophant'--were +lying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, perhaps not very +vigorously sought, a publisher for them. + + +'One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon, +the publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out +some editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively +cheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems +as pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be very +inconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each +poem should form a separate brochure of just one sheet--sixteen pages +in double columns--the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or +fifteen pounds. In this fashion began the celebrated series of 'Bells +and Pomegranates', eight numbers of which, a perfect treasury of fine +poetry, came out successively between 1841 and 1846. 'Pippa Passes' +led the way, and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale being +inconsiderable, at a shilling, which greatly encouraged the sale; +and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown, at which the price of each number +finally rested.' + + +Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series are +announced in the following preface to 'Pippa Passes', of which, in later +editions, only the dedicatory words appear: + + +'Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter I +care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured people +applauded it:--ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in +the same way that should better reward their attention. What follows +I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at +intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which +they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. +Of course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and to +provide against a certain and but too possible contingency, let me +hasten to say now--what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say +circumstantially enough at the close--that I dedicate my best intentions +most admiringly to the author of "Ion"--most affectionately to Serjeant +Talfourd.' + + +A necessary explanation of the general title was reserved for the last +number: and does something towards justifying the popular impression +that Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight from his +readers. + + +'Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take the +opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant +by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an +alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, +poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the +symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is +actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) +acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority +alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would +sufficiently convey the desired meaning. "Faith and good works" is +another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet +Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle +crowned his Theology (in the 'Camera della Segnatura') with blossoms of +the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after, +and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle buone opere--il qual +Pomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli +Ebrei."' + + +The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers of 'Bells and +Pomegranates' were: + + I. Pippa Passes. 1841. + II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842. + III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842. + Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse; + III. My Wife Gertrude. ['Boot and Saddle'.] + Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France. + Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish). + In a Gondola. + Artemis Prologuizes. + Waring; I.; II. + Queen Worship; I. Rudel and The Lady of Tripoli; II. Cristina. + Madhouse Cells; I. [Johannes Agricola.]; II. [Porphyria.] + Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 1842. + The Pied Piper of Hamelin; a Child's Story. + IV. The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. 1843. + V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy, in Three Acts. 1843. + [Second Edition, same year.] + VI. Colombe's Birthday. A Play, in Five Acts. 1844. + VII. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845. + 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (16--.)' + Pictor Ignotus. (Florence, 15--.) + Italy in England. + England in Italy. (Piano di Sorrento.) + The Lost Leader. + The Lost Mistress. + Home Thoughts, from Abroad. + The Tomb at St. Praxed's: (Rome, 15--.) + Garden Fancies; I. The Flower's Name; + II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. + France and Spain; I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime); + II. Spain--The Confessional. + The Flight of the Duchess. + Earth's Immortalities. + Song. ('Nay but you, who do not love her.') + The Boy and the Angel. + Night and Morning; I. Night; II. Morning. + Claret and Tokay. + Saul. (Part I.) + Time's Revenges. + The Glove. (Peter Ronsard loquitur.) + VIII. and last. Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy. 1846. + + +This publication has seemed entitled to a detailed notice, because it is +practically extinct, and because its nature and circumstance confer on +it a biographical interest not possessed by any subsequent issue of Mr. +Browning's works. The dramas and poems of which it is composed belong to +that more mature period of the author's life, in which the analysis of +his work ceases to form a necessary part of his history. Some few of +them, however, are significant to it; and this is notably the case with +'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'. + + + + +Chapter 8 + +1841-1844 + +'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'--Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady +Martin--Charles Dickens--Other Dramas and Minor Poems--Letters to Miss +Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower--Second Italian Journey; Naples--E. J. +Trelawney--Stendhal. + + + +'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was written for Macready, who meant to +perform the principal part; and we may conclude that the appeal for it +was urgent, since it was composed in the space of four or five days. +Macready's journals must have contained a fuller reference to both the +play and its performance (at Drury Lane, February 1843) than appears in +published form; but considerable irritation had arisen between him and +Mr. Browning, and he possibly wrote something which his editor, Sir +Frederick Pollock, as the friend of both, thought it best to omit. What +occurred on this occasion has been told in some detail by Mr. Gosse, and +would not need repeating if the question were only of re-telling it on +the same authority, in another person's words; but, through the kindness +of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hill, I am able to give Mr. Browning's direct +statement of the case, as also his expressed judgment upon it. The +statement was made more than forty years later than the events to +which it refers, but will, nevertheless, be best given in its direct +connection with them. + +The merits, or demerits, of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' had been freshly +brought under discussion by its performance in London through the action +of the Browning Society, and in Washington by Mr. Laurence Barrett; and +it became the subject of a paragraph in one of the theatrical articles +prepared for the 'Daily News'. Mr. Hill was then editor of the paper, +and when the article came to him for revision, he thought it right +to submit to Mr. Browning the passages devoted to his tragedy, which +embodied some then prevailing, but, he strongly suspected, erroneous +impressions concerning it. The results of this kind and courteous +proceeding appear in the following letter. + + +19, Warwick Crescent: December 15, 1884. + +My dear Mr. Hill,--It was kind and considerate of you to suppress the +paragraph which you send me,--and of which the publication would +have been unpleasant for reasons quite other than as regarding my own +work,--which exists to defend or accuse itself. You will judge of the +true reasons when I tell you the facts--so much of them as contradicts +the statements of your critic--who, I suppose, has received a stimulus +from the notice, in an American paper which arrived last week, of +Mr. Laurence Barrett's intention 'shortly to produce the play' in New +York--and subsequently in London: so that 'the failure' of forty-one +years ago might be duly influential at present--or two years hence +perhaps. The 'mere amateurs' are no high game. + +Macready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged at the +Haymarket, and retained it for Drury Lane, of which I was ignorant that +he was about to become the manager: he accepted it 'at the instigation' +of nobody,--and Charles Dickens was not in England when he did so: it +was read to him after his return, by Forster--and the glowing letter +which contains his opinion of it, although directed by him to be shown +to myself, was never heard of nor seen by me till printed in Forster's +book some thirty years after. When the Drury Lane season began, Macready +informed me that he should act the play when he had brought out two +others--'The Patrician's Daughter', and 'Plighted Troth': having +done so, he wrote to me that the former had been unsuccessful in +money-drawing, and the latter had 'smashed his arrangements altogether': +but he would still produce my play. I had--in my ignorance of certain +symptoms better understood by Macready's professional acquaintances--I +had no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, to 'release +him from his promise'; on the contrary, I should have fancied that such +a proposal was offensive. Soon after, Macready begged that I would call +on him: he said the play had been read to the actors the day before, +'and laughed at from beginning to end': on my speaking my mind about +this, he explained that the reading had been done by the Prompter, a +grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, ill at ease in the love +scenes, and that he would himself make amends by reading the play next +morning--which he did, and very adequately--but apprised me that, in +consequence of the state of his mind, harassed by business and various +trouble, the principal character must be taken by Mr. Phelps; and again +I failed to understand,--what Forster subsequently assured me was plain +as the sun at noonday,--that to allow at Macready's Theatre any +other than Macready to play the principal part in a new piece was +suicidal,--and really believed I was meeting his exigencies by accepting +the substitution. At the rehearsal, Macready announced that Mr. +Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the part: on the third +rehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and sat in a chair +while Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next morning Mr. +Phelps waylaid me at the stage-door to say, with much emotion, that it +never was intended that _he_ should be instrumental in the success of a +new tragedy, and that Macready would play Tresham on the ground that +himself, Phelps, was unable to do so. He added that he could not expect +me to waive such an advantage,--but that, if I were prepared to waive +it, 'he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the words in his +memory by next day.' I bade him follow me to the green-room, and hear +what I decided upon--which was that as Macready had given him the part, +he should keep it: this was on a Thursday; he rehearsed on Friday and +Saturday,--the play being acted the same evening,--_of the fifth day +after the 'reading' by MacReady_. Macready at once wished to reduce the +importance of the 'play',--as he styled it in the bills,--tried to leave +out so much of the text, that I baffled him by getting it printed in +four-and-twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He wanted me to call it +'The Sister'!--and I have before me, while I write, the stage-acting +copy, with two lines of his own insertion to avoid the tragical +ending--Tresham was to announce his intention of going into a monastery! +all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and Macready alone, could +produce a veritable 'tragedy', unproduced before. Not a shilling was +spent on scenery or dresses--and a striking scene which had been used +for the 'Patrician's Daughter', did duty a second time. If your critic +considers this treatment of the play an instance of 'the failure of +powerful and experienced actors' to ensure its success,--I can only say +that my own opinion was shown by at once breaking off a friendship of +many years--a friendship which had a right to be plainly and simply told +that the play I had contributed as a proof of it, would through a change +of circumstances, no longer be to my friend's advantage,--all I could +possibly care for. Only recently, when by the publication of Macready's +journals the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that time +was made known, could I in a measure understand his motives for such +conduct--and less than ever understand why he so strangely disguised and +disfigured them. If 'applause' means success, the play thus maimed +and maltreated was successful enough: it 'made way' for Macready's own +Benefit, and the Theatre closed a fortnight after. + +Having kept silence for all these years, in spite of repeated +explanations, in the style of your critic's, that the play 'failed in +spite of the best endeavours' &c. I hardly wish to revive a very painful +matter: on the other hand,--as I have said; my play subsists, and is as +open to praise or blame as it was forty-one years ago: is it necessary +to search out what somebody or other,--not improbably a jealous adherent +of Macready, 'the only organizer of theatrical victories', chose to say +on the subject? If the characters are 'abhorrent' and 'inscrutable'--and +the language conformable,--they were so when Dickens pronounced +upon them, and will be so whenever the critic pleases to re-consider +them--which, if he ever has an opportunity of doing, apart from the +printed copy, I can assure you is through no motion of mine. This +particular experience was sufficient: but the Play is out of my power +now; though amateurs and actors may do what they please. + +Of course, this being the true story, I should desire that it were told +_thus_ and no otherwise, if it must be told at all: but _not_ as a statement +of mine,--the substance of it has been partly stated already by more +than one qualified person, and if I have been willing to let the poor +matter drop, surely there is no need that it should be gone into now +when Macready and his Athenaeum upholder are no longer able to speak +for themselves: this is just a word to you, dear Mr. Hill, and may be +brought under the notice of your critic if you think proper--but only +for the facts--not as a communication for the public. + +Yes, thank you, I am in full health, as you wish--and I wish you and +Mrs. Hill, I assure you, all the good appropriate to the season. My +sister has completely recovered from her illness, and is grateful for +your enquiries. + +With best regards to Mrs. Hill, and an apology for this long letter, +which however,--when once induced to write it,--I could not well +shorten,--believe me, Yours truly ever Robert Browning. + + +I well remember Mr. Browning's telling me how, when he returned to the +green-room, on that critical day, he drove his hat more firmly on to his +head, and said to Macready, 'I beg pardon, sir, but you have given the +part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied that he should act it;' and how +Macready, on hearing this, crushed up the MS., and flung it on to the +ground. He also admitted that his own manner had been provocative; but +he was indignant at what he deemed the unjust treatment which Mr. Phelps +had received. The occasion of the next letter speaks for itself. + + +December 21, 1884. + +My dear Mr. Hill,--Your goodness must extend to letting me have the last +word--one of sincere thanks. You cannot suppose I doubted for a moment +of a good-will which I have had abundant proof of. I only took the +occasion your considerate letter gave me, to tell the simple truth which +my forty years' silence is a sign I would only tell on compulsion. I +never thought your critic had any less generous motive for alluding to +the performance as he did than that which he professes: he doubtless +heard the account of the matter which Macready and his intimates gave +currency to at the time; and which, being confined for a while to their +limited number, I never chose to notice. But of late years I have got to +_read_,--not merely _hear_,--of the play's failure 'which all the efforts +of my friend the great actor could not avert;' and the nonsense of this +untruth gets hard to bear. I told you the principal facts in the letter +I very hastily wrote: I could, had it been worth while, corroborate them +by others in plenty, and refer to the living witnesses--Lady Martin, +Mrs. Stirling, and (I believe) Mr. Anderson: it was solely through the +admirable loyalty of the two former that . . . a play . . . deprived +of every advantage, in the way of scenery, dresses, and +rehearsing--proved--what Macready himself declared it to be--'a complete +success'. _So_ he sent a servant to tell me, 'in case there was a call for +the author at the end of the act'--to which I replied that the author +had been too sick and sorry at the whole treatment of his play to do any +such thing. Such a call there truly _was_, and Mr. Anderson had to come +forward and 'beg the author to come forward if he were in the house--a +circumstance of which he was not aware:' whereat the author laughed at +him from a box just opposite. . . . I would submit to anybody drawing a +conclusion from one or two facts past contradiction, whether that play +could have thoroughly failed which was not only not withdrawn at +once but acted three nights in the same week, and years afterwards, +reproduced at his own theatre, during my absence in Italy, by Mr. +Phelps--the person most completely aware of the untoward circumstances +which stood originally in the way of success. Why not enquire how it +happens that, this second time, there was no doubt of the play's doing +as well as plays ordinarily do? for those were not the days of a 'run'. + +. . . . . + +. . . This 'last word' has indeed been an Aristophanic one of fifty +syllables: but I have spoken it, relieved myself, and commend all that +concerns me to the approved and valued friend of whom I am proud to +account myself in corresponding friendship, His truly ever Robert +Browning. + + +Mr. Browning also alludes to Mr. Phelps's acting as not only not having +been detrimental to the play, but having helped to save it, in the +conspiracy of circumstances which seemed to invoke its failure. This was +a mistake, since Macready had been anxious to resume the part, and would +have saved it, to say the least, more thoroughly. It must, however, be +remembered that the irritation which these letters express was due much +less to the nature of the facts recorded in them than to the manner in +which they had been brought before Mr. Browning's mind. Writing on the +subject to Lady Martin in February 1881, he had spoken very temperately +of Macready's treatment of his play, while deprecating the injustice +towards his own friendship which its want of frankness involved: and +many years before this, the touch of a common sorrow had caused the old +feeling, at least momentarily, to well up again. The two met for the +first time after these occurrences when Mr. Browning had returned, a +widower, from Italy. Mr. Macready, too, had recently lost his wife; and +Mr. Browning could only start forward, grasp the hand of his old friend, +and in a voice choked with emotion say, 'O Macready!' + +Lady Martin has spoken to me of the poet's attitude on the occasion of +this performance as being full of generous sympathy for those who were +working with him, as well as of the natural anxiety of a young author +for his own success. She also remains convinced that this sympathy led +him rather to over-than to under-rate the support he received. She wrote +concerning it in 'Blackwood's Magazine', March 1881: + + +'It seems but yesterday that I sat by his [Mr. Elton's] side in the +green-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful drama, 'A Blot +in the 'Scutcheon'. As a rule Mr. Macready always read the new plays. +But owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was entrusted +on this occasion to the head prompter,--a clever man in his way, but +wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's +meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted, +perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruel +father" [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and +indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of +the verse. But somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few of +the actors during the rehearsals chose to continue to misunderstand the +text, and never took the interest in the play which they would have done +had Mr. Macready read it.' + + +Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the widening +perspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare as +he did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred, that +her '_perfect_ behaviour as a woman' and her 'admirable playing as an +actress' had been (or at all events were) to him 'the one gratifying +circumstance connected with it.' + +He also felt it a just cause of bitterness that the letter from Charles +Dickens,* which conveyed his almost passionate admiration of 'A Blot in +the 'Scutcheon', and was clearly written to Mr. Forster in order that +it might be seen, was withheld for thirty years from his knowledge, and +that of the public whose judgment it might so largely have influenced. +Nor was this the only time in the poet's life that fairly earned honours +escaped him. + + * See Forster's 'Life of Dickens'. + +'Colombe's Birthday' was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;* and +afterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit, +who created the principal part. It was again performed for the Browning +Society in 1885,** and although Miss Alma Murray, as Colombe, was almost +entirely supported by amateurs, the result fully justified Miss +Mary Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter) in writing immediately +afterwards in the Boston 'Literary World':*** + + * Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston. + + ** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning + Society, and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King, + in January 1882. + + *** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons' + 'Introduction to the Study of Browning'. + + +'"Colombe's Birthday" is charming on the boards, clearer, more direct in +action, more full of delicate surprises than one imagines it in print. +With a very little cutting it could be made an excellent acting play.' + + +Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting, and +alludes in his 'Personalia' to the greatly increased knowledge of the +stage which its minute directions displayed. They told also of sad +experience in the sacrifice of the poet which the play-writer so often +exacts: since they included the proviso that unless a very good Valence +could be found, a certain speech of his should be left out. That speech +is very important to the poetic, and not less to the moral, purpose +of the play: the triumph of unworldly affections. It is that in which +Valence defies the platitudes so often launched against rank and power, +and shows that these may be very beautiful things--in which he pleads +for his rival, and against his own heart. He is the better man of +the two, and Colombe has fallen genuinely in love with him. But the +instincts of sovereignty are not outgrown in one day however eventful, +and the young duchess has shown herself amply endowed with them. The +Prince's offer promised much, and it held still more. The time may come +when she will need that crowning memory of her husband's unselfishness +and truth, not to regret what she has done. + +'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The Return of the Druses' are both +admitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage; +and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted to +witnessing the revival of 'Strafford' or 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', +from neither of which the best amateur performance could remove the +stigma of past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friend +belonging to the Browning Society told him she had been seriously +occupied with the possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assented +to the idea with a simplicity that was almost touching, 'It _was_ written +for the stage,' he said, 'and has only one scene.' He knew, however, +that the single scene was far from obviating all the difficulties of +the case, and that the Society, with its limited means, did the best it +could. + +I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in 'King Victor and King +Charles' which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, +revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while its +occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, +the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in which +Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for _duty's_ sake to retain +the crown, though he will earn, by so doing, neither the credit of a +virtuous deed nor the sure, persistent consciousness of having performed +one. + +Four poems of the 'Dramatic Lyrics' had appeared, as I have said, in the +'Monthly Repository'. Six of those included in the 'Dramatic Lyrics and +Romances' were first published in 'Hood's Magazine' from June 1844 +to April 1845, a month before Hood's death. These poems were, 'The +Laboratory', 'Claret and Tokay', 'Garden Fancies', 'The Boy and the +Angel', 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's', and 'The Flight of the Duchess'. Mr. +Hood's health had given way under stress of work, and Mr. Browning +with other friends thus came forward to help him. The fact deserves +remembering in connection with his subsequent unbroken rule never to +write for magazines. He might always have made exceptions for friendly +or philanthropic objects; the appearance of 'Herve Riel' in the +'Cornhill Magazine', 1870, indeed proves that it was so. But the offer +of a blank cheque would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to this +concession, as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literary +purpose. + +'In a Gondola' grew out of a single verse extemporized for a picture by +Maclise, in what circumstances we shall hear in the poet's own words. + +The first proof of 'Artemis Prologuizes' had the following note: + + +'I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained of a +tragedy I composed, much against my endeavour, while in bed with a fever +two years ago--it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia; +but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once, I soon forgot +the remainder.'* + + * When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for + the 'Handbook', he spoke as if his illness had interrupted + the work, not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I + think, the more striking. + +Mr. Browning would have been very angry with himself if he had known he +ever wrote 'I _had_ better'; and the punctuation of this note, as well as +of every other unrevised specimen which we possess of his early writing, +helps to show by what careful study of the literary art he must have +acquired his subsequent mastery of it. + +'Cristina' was addressed in fancy to the Spanish queen. It is to be +regretted that the poem did not remain under its original heading of +'Queen Worship': as this gave a practical clue to the nature of the love +described, and the special remoteness of its object. + +'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and another poem were written in May 1842 +for Mr. Macready's little eldest son, Willy, who was confined to the +house by illness, and who was to amuse himself by illustrating the poems +as well as reading them;* and the first of these, though not intended +for publication, was added to the 'Dramatic Lyrics', because some +columns of that number of 'Bells and Pomegranates' still required +filling. It is perhaps not known that the second was 'Crescentius, the +Pope's Legate': now included in 'Asolando'. + + * Miss Browning has lately found some of the illustrations, + and the touching childish letter together with which + her brother received them. + +Mr. Browning's father had himself begun a rhymed story on the subject of +'The Pied Piper'; but left it unfinished when he discovered that his son +was writing one. The fragment survives as part of a letter addressed to +Mr. Thomas Powell, and which I have referred to as in the possession of +Mr. Dykes Campbell. + +'The Lost Leader' has given rise to periodical questionings continued +until the present day, as to the person indicated in its title. Mr. +Browning answered or anticipated them fifteen years ago in a letter to +Miss Lee, of West Peckham, Maidstone. It was his reply to an application +in verse made to him in their very young days by herself and two other +members of her family, the manner of which seems to have unusually +pleased him. + + +Villers-sur-mer, Calvados, France: September 7, '75. + +Dear Friends,--Your letter has made a round to reach me--hence the delay +in replying to it--which you will therefore pardon. I have been asked +the question you put to me--tho' never asked so poetically and so +pleasantly--I suppose a score of times: and I can only answer, with +something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in +my mind--but simply as 'a model'; you know, an artist takes one or two +striking traits in the features of his 'model', and uses them to start +his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good man or +woman who happens to be 'sitting' for nose and eye. + +I thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism, at an unlucky +juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But--once +call my fancy-portrait 'Wordsworth'--and how much more ought one to +say,--how much more would not I have attempted to say! + +There is my apology, dear friends, and your acceptance of it will +confirm me Truly yours, Robert Browning. + + +Some fragments of correspondence, not all very interesting, and his +own allusion to an attack of illness, are our only record of the poet's +general life during the interval which separated the publication of +'Pippa Passes' from his second Italian journey. + +An undated letter to Miss Haworth probably refers to the close of 1841. + + +'. . . I am getting to love painting as I did once. Do you know I was +a young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing? My +father had faith in me, and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies, I +well know, a certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil and black currant +jam-juice (paint being rank poison, as they said when I sucked my +brushes) with his (my father's) note in one corner, "R. B., aetat. two +years three months." "How fast, alas, our days we spend--How vain +they be, how soon they end!" I am going to print "Victor", however, by +February, and there is one thing not so badly painted in there--oh, let +me tell you. I chanced to call on Forster the other day, and he pressed +me into committing verse on the instant, not the minute, in Maclise's +behalf, who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, for the +British Institution. Forster described it well--but I could do nothing +better, than this wooden ware--(all the "properties", as we say, were +given, and the problem was how to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason). + + I send my heart up to thee, all my heart + In this my singing! + For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; + The very night is clinging + Closer to Venice' streets to leave me space + Above me, whence thy face + May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place. + +Singing and stars and night and Venice streets and joyous heart, are +properties, do you please to see. And now tell me, is this below the +average of catalogue original poetry? Tell me--for to that end of being +told, I write. . . . I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch +me calling people "dear" in a hurry, except in letter-beginnings!) +yesterday. I don't know any people like them. There was a son of Burns +there, Major Burns whom Macready knows--he sung "Of all the airts", +"John Anderson", and another song of his father's. . . .' + + +In the course of 1842 he wrote the following note to Miss Flower, +evidently relating to the publication of her 'Hymns and Anthems'. + + +New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey: Tuesday morning. + +Dear Miss Flower,--I am sorry for what must grieve Mr. Fox; for myself, +I beg him earnestly not to see me till his entire convenience, however +pleased I shall be to receive the letter you promise on his part. + +And how can I thank you enough for this good news--all this music I +shall be so thoroughly gratified to hear? Ever yours faithfully, Robert +Browning. + + +His last letter to her was written in 1845; the subject being a concert +of her own sacred music which she was about to give; and again, although +more slightly, I anticipate the course of events, in order to give it +in its natural connection with the present one. Mr. Browning was +now engaged to be married, and the last ring of youthful levity had +disappeared from his tone; but neither the new happiness nor the new +responsibility had weakened his interest in his boyhood's friend. Miss +Flower must then have been slowly dying, and the closing words of the +letter have the solemnity of a last farewell. + + +Sunday. + +Dear Miss Flower,--I was very foolishly surprized at the sorrowful +finical notice you mention: foolishly; for, God help us, how else is +it with all critics of everything--don't I hear them talk and see them +write? I dare-say he admires you as he said. + +For me, I never had another feeling than entire admiration for your +music--entire admiration--I put it apart from all other English music I +know, and fully believe in it as _the_ music we all waited for. + +Of your health I shall not trust myself to speak: you must know what +is unspoken. I should have been most happy to see you if but for a +minute--and if next Wednesday, I might take your hand for a moment.-- + +But you would concede that, if it were right, remembering what is now +very old friendship. May God bless you for ever (The signature has been +cut off.) + + +In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship, it +is believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance of a young +Neapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris; and they +became such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together. Mr. +Scotti was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged their +conveyance, and did all such bargaining in their joint interest as the +habits of his country required. 'As I write,' Mr. Browning said in a +letter to his sister, 'I hear him disputing our bill in the next room. +He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles when we have +used only two.' At Rome they spent most of their evenings with an +old acquaintance of Mr. Browning's, then Countess Carducci, and she +pronounced Mr. Scotti the handsomest man she had ever seen. He certainly +bore no appearance of being the least prosperous. But he blew out his +brains soon after he and his new friend had parted; and I do not think +the act was ever fully accounted for. + +It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went to +Leghorn to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter of +introduction. He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. Val +Prinsep, but chiefly in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr. +Trelawney had displayed during its course. A surgeon was occupied all +the time in probing his leg for a bullet which had been lodged there +some years before, and had lately made itself felt; and he showed +himself absolutely indifferent to the pain of the operation. Mr. +Browning's main object in paying the visit had been, naturally, to speak +with one who had known Byron and been the last to see Shelley alive; but +we only hear of the two poets that they formed in part the subject +of their conversation. He reached England, again, we suppose, through +Germany--since he avoided Paris as before. + +It has been asserted by persons otherwise well informed, that on this, +if not on his previous Italian journey, Mr. Browning became acquainted +with Stendhal, then French Consul at Civita Vecchia, and that he imbibed +from the great novelist a taste for curiosities of Italian family +history, which ultimately led him in the direction of the Franceschini +case. It is certain that he profoundly admired this writer, and if he +was not, at some time or other, introduced to him it was because the +opportunity did not occur. But there is abundant evidence that no +introduction took place, and quite sufficient proof that none was +possible. Stendhal died in Paris in March 1842; and granting that he was +at Civita Vecchia when the poet made his earlier voyage--no certainty +even while he held the appointment--the ship cannot have touched there +on its way to Trieste. It is also a mistake to suppose that Mr. Browning +was specially interested in ancient chronicles, as such. This was one of +the points on which he distinctly differed from his father. He took his +dramatic subjects wherever he found them, and any historical research +which they ultimately involved was undertaken for purposes of +verification. 'Sordello' alone may have been conceived on a rather +different plan, and I have no authority whatever for admitting that it +was so. The discovery of the record of the Franceschini case was, as its +author has everywhere declared, an accident. + +A single relic exists for us of this visit to the South--a shell picked +up, according to its inscription, on one of the Syren Isles, October +4, 1844; but many of its reminiscences are embodied in that vivid and +charming picture 'The Englishman in Italy', which appeared in the 'Bells +and Pomegranates' number for the following year. Naples always remained +a bright spot in the poet's memory; and if it had been, like Asolo, his +first experience of Italy, it must have drawn him in later years the +more powerfully of the two. At one period, indeed, he dreamed of it as a +home for his declining days. + + + + +Chapter 9 + +1844-1849 + +Introduction to Miss Barrett--Engagement--Motives for +Secrecy--Marriage--Journey to Italy--Extract of Letter from +Mr. Fox--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford--Life at +Pisa--Vallombrosa--Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle--Proposed British +Mission to the Vatican--Father Prout--Palazzo Guidi--Fano; Ancona--'A +Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. + + + +During his recent intercourse with the Browning family Mr. Kenyon had +often spoken of his invalid cousin, Elizabeth Barrett,* and had given +them copies of her works; and when the poet returned to England, late in +1844, he saw the volume containing 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship', which +had appeared during his absence. On hearing him express his admiration +of it, Mr. Kenyon begged him to write to Miss Barrett, and himself tell +her how the poems had impressed him; 'for,' he added, 'my cousin is a +great invalid, and sees no one, but great souls jump at sympathy.' +Mr. Browning did write, and, a few months, probably, after the +correspondence had been established, begged to be allowed to visit +her. She at first refused this, on the score of her delicate health and +habitual seclusion, emphasizing the refusal by words of such touching +humility and resignation that I cannot refrain from quoting them. 'There +is nothing to see in me, nothing to hear in me. I am a weed fit for the +ground and darkness.' But her objections were overcome, and their first +interview sealed Mr. Browning's fate. + + * Properly E. Barrett Moulton-Barrett. The first of these + surnames was that originally borne by the family, but + dropped on the annexation of the second. It has now for + some years been resumed. + +There is no cause for surprize in the passionate admiration with +which Miss Barrett so instantly inspired him. To begin with, he was +heart-whole. It would be too much to affirm that, in the course of his +thirty-two years, he had never met with a woman whom he could entirely +love; but if he had, it was not under circumstances which favoured the +growth of such a feeling. She whom he now saw for the first time had +long been to him one of the greatest of living poets; she was learned as +women seldom were in those days. It must have been apparent, in the most +fugitive contact, that her moral nature was as exquisite as her mind +was exceptional. She looked much younger than her age, which he only +recently knew to have been six years beyond his own; and her face was +filled with beauty by the large, expressive eyes. The imprisoned love +within her must unconsciously have leapt to meet his own. It would have +been only natural that he should grow into the determination to devote +his life to hers, or be swept into an offer of marriage by a sudden +impulse which his after-judgment would condemn. Neither of these things +occurred. The offer was indeed made under a sudden and overmastering +impulse. But it was persistently repeated, till it had obtained a +conditional assent. No sane man in Mr. Browning's position could have +been ignorant of the responsibilities he was incurring. He had, it +is true, no experience of illness. Of its nature, its treatment, its +symptoms direct and indirect, he remained pathetically ignorant to his +dying day. He did not know what disqualifications for active existence +might reside in the fragile, recumbent form, nor in the long years +lived without change of air or scene beyond the passage, not always even +allowed, from bed-room to sitting-room, from sofa to bed again. But he +did know that Miss Barrett received him lying down, and that his very +ignorance of her condition left him without security for her ever being +able to stand. A strong sense of sympathy and pity could alone entirely +justify or explain his act--a strong desire to bring sunshine into that +darkened life. We might be sure that these motives had been present with +him if we had no direct authority for believing it; and we have this +authority in his own comparatively recent words: 'She had so much need +of care and protection. There was so much pity in what I felt for her!' +The pity was, it need hardly be said, at no time a substitute for love, +though the love in its full force only developed itself later; but it +supplied an additional incentive. + +Miss Barrett had made her acceptance of Mr. Browning's proposal +contingent on her improving in health. The outlook was therefore vague. +But under the influence of this great new happiness she did gain +some degree of strength. They saw each other three times a week; they +exchanged letters constantly, and a very deep and perfect understanding +established itself between them. Mr. Browning never mentioned his visits +except to his own family, because it was naturally feared that if +Miss Barrett were known to receive one person, other friends, or even +acquaintances, would claim admittance to her; and Mr. Kenyon, who was +greatly pleased by the result of his introduction, kept silence for the +same reason. + +In this way the months slipped by till the summer of 1846 was drawing to +its close, and Miss Barrett's doctor then announced that her only chance +of even comparative recovery lay in spending the coming winter in the +South. There was no rational obstacle to her acting on this advice, +since more than one of her brothers was willing to escort her; but Mr. +Barrett, while surrounding his daughter with every possible comfort, +had resigned himself to her invalid condition and expected her also to +acquiesce in it. He probably did not believe that she would benefit by +the proposed change. At any rate he refused his consent to it. There +remained to her only one alternative--to break with the old home and +travel southwards as Mr. Browning's wife. + +When she had finally assented to this course, she took a preparatory +step which, in so far as it was known, must itself have been +sufficiently startling to those about her: she drove to Regent's Park, +and when there, stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I do +not know how long she stood--probably only for a moment; but I well +remember hearing that when, after so long an interval, she felt earth +under her feet and air about her, the sensation was almost bewilderingly +strange. + +They were married, with strict privacy, on September 12, 1846, at St. +Pancras Church. + +The engaged pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett's sanction to +their marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestine +character thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise than +repugnant to Mr. Browning's pride; but it was dictated by the deepest +filial affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be no +question in so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness with +that of the man she loved; she was determined to give herself to him. +But she knew that her father would never consent to her doing so; and +she preferred marrying without his knowledge to acting in defiance of a +prohibition which, once issued, he would never have revoked, and which +would have weighed like a portent of evil upon her. She even kept the +secret of her engagement from her intimate friend Miss Mitford, and +her second father, Mr. Kenyon, that they might not be involved in its +responsibility. And Mr. Kenyon, who, probably of all her circle, best +understood the case, was grateful to her for this consideration. + +Mr. Barrett was one of those men who will not part with their children; +who will do anything for them except allow them to leave the parental +home. We have all known fathers of this type. He had nothing to urge +against Robert Browning. When Mr. Kenyon, later, said to him that he +could not understand his hostility to the marriage, since there was no +man in the world to whom he would more gladly have given his daughter +if he had been so fortunate as to possess one,* he replied: 'I have no +objection to the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking of +another world;' and, given his conviction that Miss Barrett's state was +hopeless, some allowance must be made for the angered sense of fitness +which her elopement was calculated to arouse in him. But his attitude +was the same, under the varying circumstances, with all his daughters +and sons alike. There was no possible husband or wife whom he would +cordially have accepted for one of them. + + * Mr. Kenyon had been twice married, but he had no children. + +Mr. Browning had been willing, even at that somewhat late age, to study +for the Bar, or accept, if he could obtain it, any other employment +which might render him less ineligible from a pecuniary point of view. +But Miss Barrett refused to hear of such a course; and the subsequent +necessity for her leaving England would have rendered it useless. + +For some days after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Browning returned to +their old life. He justly thought that the agitation of the ceremony +had been, for the moment, as much as she could endure, and had therefore +fixed for it a day prior by one week to that of their intended departure +from England. The only difference in their habits was that he did not +see her; he recoiled from the hypocrisy of asking for her under her +maiden name; and during this passive interval, fortunately short, he +carried a weight of anxiety and of depression which placed it among the +most painful periods of his existence. + +In the late afternoon or evening of September 19, Mrs. Browning, +attended by her maid and her dog, stole away from her father's house. +The family were at dinner, at which meal she was not in the habit of +joining them; her sisters Henrietta and Arabel had been throughout in +the secret of her attachment and in full sympathy with it; in the case +of the servants, she was also sure of friendly connivance. There was no +difficulty in her escape, but that created by the dog, which might be +expected to bark its consciousness of the unusual situation. She took +him into her confidence. She said: 'O Flush, if you make a sound, I +am lost.' And Flush understood, as what good dog would not?--and crept +after his mistress in silence. I do not remember where her husband +joined her; we may be sure it was as near her home as possible. That +night they took the boat to Havre, on their way to Paris. + +Only a short time elapsed before Mr. Barrett became aware of what had +happened. It is not necessary to dwell on his indignation, which at that +moment, I believe, was shared by all his sons. Nor were they the only +persons to be agitated by the occurrence. If there was wrath in the +Barrett family, there was consternation in that of Mr. Browning. He +had committed a crime in the eyes of his wife's father; but he had been +guilty, in the judgment of his own parents, of one of those errors which +are worse. A hundred times the possible advantages of marrying a Miss +Barrett could never have balanced for them the risks and dangers he +had incurred in wresting to himself the guardianship of that frail life +which might perish in his hands, leaving him to be accused of having +destroyed it; and they must have awaited the event with feelings never +to be forgotten. + +It was soon to be apparent that in breaking the chains which bound her +to a sick room, Mr. Browning had not killed his wife, but was giving her +a new lease of existence. His parents and sister soon loved her dearly, +for her own sake as well as her husband's; and those who, if in a +mistaken manner, had hitherto cherished her, gradually learned, with one +exception, to value him for hers. It would, however, be useless to +deny that the marriage was a hazardous experiment, involving risks of +suffering quite other than those connected with Mrs. Browning's safety: +the latent practical disparities of an essentially vigorous and an +essentially fragile existence; and the time came when these were to make +themselves felt. Mrs. Browning had been a delicate infant. She had also +outgrown this delicacy and developed into a merry, and, in the harmless +sense, mischief-loving child. The accident which subsequently undermined +her life could only have befallen a very active and healthy girl.* +Her condition justified hope and, to a great extent, fulfilled it. She +rallied surprisingly and almost suddenly in the sunshine of her new +life, and remained for several years at the higher physical level: her +natural and now revived spirits sometimes, I imagine, lifting her beyond +it. But her ailments were too radical for permanent cure, as the weak +voice and shrunken form never ceased to attest. They renewed themselves, +though in slightly different conditions; and she gradually relapsed, +during the winters at least, into something like the home-bound +condition of her earlier days. It became impossible that she should +share the more active side of her husband's existence. It had to be +alternately suppressed and carried on without her. The deep heart-love, +the many-sided intellectual sympathy, preserved their union in rare +beauty to the end. But to say that it thus maintained itself as if by +magic, without effort of self-sacrifice on his part or of resignation on +hers, would be as unjust to the noble qualities of both, as it would be +false to assert that its compensating happiness had ever failed them. + + * Her family at that time lived in the country. She was a + constant rider, and fond of saddling her pony; and one day, + when she was about fourteen, she overbalanced herself in + lifting the saddle, and fell backward, inflicting injuries + on her head, or rather spine, which caused her great + suffering, but of which the nature remained for some time + undiscovered. + +Mr. Browning's troubles did not, even for the present, exhaust +themselves in that week of apprehension. They assumed a deeper reality +when his delicate wife first gave herself into his keeping, and the long +hours on steamboat and in diligence were before them. What she suffered +in body, and he in mind, during the first days of that wedding-journey +is better imagined than told. In Paris they either met, or were joined +by, a friend, Mrs. Anna Jameson (then also en route for Italy), and Mrs. +Browning was doubly cared for till she and her husband could once more +put themselves on their way. At Genoa came the long-needed rest in +southern land. From thence, in a few days, they went on to Pisa, and +settled there for the winter. + +Even so great a friend as John Forster was not in the secret of Mr. +Browning's marriage; we learn this through an amusing paragraph in a +letter from Mr. Fox, written soon after it had taken place: + + +'Forster never heard of the Browning marriage till the proof of the +newspaper ('Examiner') notice was sent; when he went into one of his +great passions at the supposed hoax, ordered up the compositor to have a +swear at him, and demanded to see the MS. from which it was taken: so it +was brought, and he instantly recognised the hand of Browning's sister. +Next day came a letter from R. B., saying he had often meant to tell him +or write of it, but hesitated between the two, and neglected both. + +'She was better, and a winter in Italy had been recommended some months +ago. + +'It seems as if made up by their poetry rather than themselves.' + + +Many interesting external details of Mr. Browning's married life must +have been lost to us through the wholesale destruction of his letters to +his family, of which mention has been already made, and which he carried +out before leaving Warwick Crescent about four years ago; and Mrs. +Browning's part in the correspondence, though still preserved, cannot +fill the gap, since for a long time it chiefly consisted of +little personal outpourings, inclosed in her husband's letters and +supplementary to them. But she also wrote constantly to Miss Mitford; +and, from the letters addressed to her, now fortunately in Mr. Barrett +Browning's hands, it has been possible to extract many passages of a +sufficiently great, and not too private, interest for our purpose. +These extracts--in some cases almost entire letters--indeed constitute +a fairly complete record of Mr. and Mrs. Browning's joint life till +the summer of 1854, when Miss Mitford's death was drawing near, and the +correspondence ceased. Their chronological order is not always certain, +because Mrs. Browning never gave the year in which her letters were +written, and in some cases the postmark is obliterated; but the missing +date can almost always be gathered from their contents. The first letter +is probably written from Paris. + + +Oct. 2 ('46). + +'. . . and he, as you say, had done everything for me--he loved me for +reasons which had helped to weary me of myself--loved me heart to heart +persistently--in spite of my own will . . . drawn me back to life and +hope again when I had done with both. My life seemed to belong to him +and to none other, at last, and I had no power to speak a word. Have +faith in me, my dearest friend, till you know him. The intellect is so +little in comparison to all the rest--to the womanly tenderness, the +inexhaustible goodness, the high and noble aspiration of every hour. +Temper, spirits, manners--there is not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes +sometimes and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel. Only, if it had +been a dream, the pain of some parts of it would have wakened me before +now--it is not a dream. . . .' + + +The three next speak for themselves. + + +Pisa: ('46). + +'. . . For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full of beauty +and repose,--and the purple mountains gloriously seem to beckon us on +deeper into the vine land. We have rooms close to the Duomo, and leaning +down on the great Collegio built by Facini. Three excellent bed-rooms +and a sitting-room matted and carpeted, looking comfortable even for +England. For the last fortnight, except the last few sunny days, we have +had rain; but the climate is as mild as possible, no cold with all the +damp. Delightful weather we had for the travelling. Mrs. Jameson says +she won't call me improved but transformed rather. . . . I mean to know +something about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get him to +open my eyes for me with a little instruction--in this place are to be +seen the first steps of Art. . . .' + + + +Pisa: Dec. 19 ('46). + +'. . . Within these three or four days we have had frost--yes, and a +little snow--for the first time, say the Pisans, within five years. +Robert says the mountains are powdered towards Lucca. . . .' + + + +Feb. 3 ('47). + +'. . . Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of his +books, but certainly he does not in a general way appreciate our French +people quite with my warmth. He takes too high a standard, I tell him, +and won't listen to a story for a story's sake--I can bear, you know, to +be amused without a strong pull on my admiration. So we have great wars +sometimes--I put up Dumas' flag or Soulie's or Eugene Sue's (yet he was +properly impressed by the 'Mysteres de Paris'), and carry it till my +arms ache. The plays and vaudevilles he knows far more of than I do, +and always maintains they are the happiest growth of the French school. +Setting aside the 'masters', observe; for Balzac and George Sand hold +all their honours. Then we read together the other day 'Rouge et Noir', +that powerful work of Stendhal's, and he observed that it was exactly +like Balzac 'in the raw'--in the material and undeveloped conception . . . +We leave Pisa in April, and pass through Florence towards the north of +Italy . . .' + +(She writes out a long list of the 'Comedie Humaine' for Miss Mitford.) + + +Mr. and Mrs. Browning must have remained in Florence, instead of merely +passing through it; this is proved by the contents of the two following +letters: + + +Aug. 20 ('47). + +'. . . We have spent one of the most delightful of summers +notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the possibility of +St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot certainly it has been +and is, yet there have been cool intermissions, and as we have spacious +and airy rooms, as Robert lets me sit all day in my white dressing-gown +without a single masculine criticism, and as we can step out of the +window on a sort of balcony terrace which is quite private, and swims +over with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon water-melons +and iced water and figs and all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with +an angelic patience. + +We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them for two +months, but the new abbot said or implied that Wilson and I stank in his +nostrils, being women. So we were sent away at the end of five days. So +provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a sea of hills looking alive +among the clouds--which rolled, it was difficult to discern. Such fine +woods, supernaturally silent, with the ground black as ink. There were +eagles there too, and there was no road. Robert went on horseback, +and Wilson and I were drawn on a sledge--(i.e. an old hamper, a basket +wine-hamper--without a wheel) by two white bullocks, up the precipitous +mountains. Think of my travelling in those wild places at four o'clock +in the morning! a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy +of admiration. It was a sight to see before one died and went away into +another world. But being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days, +we had to come back to Florence to find a new apartment cooler than the +old, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon, and dear Mr. Kenyon does not come +after all. And on the 20th of September we take up our knapsacks and +turn our faces towards Rome, creeping slowly along, with a pause at +Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni. +Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian +rock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. +This Florence is unspeakably beautiful . . .' + + + +Oct. ('47). + +'. . . Very few acquaintances have we made in Florence, and very quietly +lived out our days. Mr. Powers, the sculptor, is our chief friend and +favourite. A most charming, simple, straightforward, genial American--as +simple as the man of genius he has proved himself to be. He sometimes +comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much. The +sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light--you +would scarcely marvel if they clove the marble without the help of his +hands. We have seen, besides, the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at +Venice; and Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, an authoress and +poetess on her own account, having been introduced to Robert in London +at Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out, and paid us a visit. A very +vivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough . . .' + + +In this year, 1847, the question arose of a British mission to the +Vatican; and Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Monckton Milnes begging him to +signify to the Foreign Office his more than willingness to take part +in it. He would be glad and proud, he said, to be secretary to such an +embassy, and to work like a horse in his vocation. The letter is given +in the lately published biography of Lord Houghton, and I am obliged to +confess that it has been my first intimation of the fact recorded there. +When once his 'Paracelsus' had appeared, and Mr. Browning had taken rank +as a poet, he renounced all idea of more active work; and the tone and +habits of his early married life would have seemed scarcely consistent +with a renewed impulse towards it. But the fact was in some sense due +to the very circumstances of that life: among them, his wife's probable +incitement to, and certain sympathy with, the proceeding. + +The projected winter in Rome had been given up, I believe against the +doctor's advice, on the strength of the greater attractions of Florence. +Our next extract is dated from thence, Dec. 8, 1847. + + +'. . . Think what we have done since I last wrote to you. Taken two +houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the +contract. You will set it down to excellent poet's work in the way +of domestic economy, but the fault was altogether mine, as usual. My +husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased with +three days through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequence +was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go away +ourselves--any alternative being preferable to a return of illness--and +I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. +You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes +in Italy. So away we came into the blaze of him in the Piazza Pitti; +precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace; I with my remorse, and poor +Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the +angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the +thing--but as to _his_ being angry with _me_ for any cause except not +eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So +here we are in the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine +from morning till evening, and most days I am able to get out into the +piazza and walk up and down for twenty minutes without feeling a breath +of the actual winter . . . and Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at +night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine, +and warm her feet at our fire--and a kinder, more cordial little +creature, full of talent and accomplishment never had the world's polish +on it. Very amusing she is too, and original; and a good deal of +laughing she and Robert make between them. And this is nearly all we see +of the Face Divine--I can't make Robert go out a single evening. . . .' + + +We have five extracts for 1848. One of these, not otherwise dated, +describes an attack of sore-throat which was fortunately Mr. Browning's +last; and the letter containing it must have been written in the course +of the summer. + + +'. . . My husband was laid up for nearly a month with fever and relaxed +sore-throat. Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands and +languid eyes--the only unhappiness I ever had by him. And then he +wouldn't see a physician, and if it had not been that just at the right +moment Mr. Mahoney, the celebrated Jesuit, and "Father Prout" of Fraser, +knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us on +his way to Rome, pointed out to us that the fever got ahead through +weakness, and mixed up with his own kind hand a potion of eggs and port +wine; to the horror of our Italian servant, who lifted up his eyes at +such a prescription for fever, crying, "O Inglesi! Inglesi!" the case +would have been far worse, I have no kind of doubt, for the eccentric +prescription gave the power of sleeping, and the pulse grew quieter +directly. I shall always be grateful to Father Prout--always.'* + + * It had not been merely a case of relaxed sore-throat. + There was an abscess, which burst during this first night of + sleep. + + +May 28. + +'. . . And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last, +little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was, to get to England +as much in summer as possible, the expense of the intermediate journeys +making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case, it +appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our way +of taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment and furnish it +would leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of the +first year in exchange for our outlay, and all but a free residence +afterwards, the cheapness of furniture being quite fabulous at the +present crisis. . . . In fact we have really done it magnificently, and +planted ourselves in the Guidi Palace in the favourite suite of the last +Count (his arms are in scagliola on the floor of my bedroom). Though we +have six beautiful rooms and a kitchen, three of them quite palace rooms +and opening on a terrace, and though such furniture as comes by slow +degrees into them is antique and worthy of the place, we yet shall have +saved money by the end of this year. . . . Now I tell you all this lest +you should hear dreadful rumours of our having forsaken our native land, +venerable institutions and all, whereas we remember it so well (it's a +dear land in many senses), that we have done this thing chiefly in order +to make sure of getting back comfortably, . . . a stone's throw, too, it +is from the Pitti, and really in my present mind I would hardly exchange +with the Grand Duke himself. By the bye, as to street, we have no +spectators in windows in just the grey wall of a church called San +Felice for good omen. + +'Now, have you heard enough of us? What I claimed first, in way of +privilege, was a spring-sofa to loll upon, and a supply of rain water to +wash in, and you shall see what a picturesque oil-jar they have given +us for the latter purpose; it would just hold the Captain of the +Forty Thieves. As for the chairs and tables, I yield the more especial +interest in them to Robert; only you would laugh to hear us correct +one another sometimes. "Dear, you get too many drawers, and not enough +washing-stands. Pray don't let us have any more drawers when we've +nothing more to put in them." There was no division on the necessity of +having six spoons--some questions passed themselves. . . .' + + + +July. + +'. . . I am quite well again and strong. Robert and I go out often after +tea in a wandering walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, +or, better still, at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure +gold under the bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, we +are happier than ever. . . .' + + + +Aug. + +'. . . As for ourselves we have hardly done so well--yet well--having +enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent us +to Fano as "a delightful summer residence for an English family," and we +found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched into +paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of the +inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words that no drop of +rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A "circulating library" +which "does not give out books," and "a refined and intellectual Italian +society" (I quote Murray for that phrase) which "never reads a book +through" (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's mother, who has lived in +Fano seven years) complete the advantages of the place. Yet the churches +are very beautiful, and a divine picture of Guercino's is worth going +all that way to see. . . . We fled from Fano after three days, and +finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, resolved +on substituting for it what the Italians call "un bel giro". So we went +to Ancona--a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, and +elbowing out the purple tides--beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation +of the rock itself you would call the houses that seem to grow there--so +identical is the colour and character. I should like to visit Ancona +again when there is a little air and shadow. We stayed a week, as it +was, living upon fish and cold water. . . .' + + +The one dated Florence, December 16, is interesting with reference to +Mr. Browning's attitude when he wrote the letters to Mr. Frank Hill +which I have recently quoted. + + +'We have been, at least I have been, a little anxious lately about the +fate of the 'Blot in the 'Scutcheon' which Mr. Phelps applied for +my husband's permission to revive at Sadler's. Of course putting the +request was mere form, as he had every right to act the play--only it +made ME anxious till we heard the result--and we both of us are very +grateful to dear Mr. Chorley, who not only made it his business to be at +the theatre the first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true +friend to give us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a +more legitimate success. The play went straight to the hearts of the +audience, it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage, from +the papers. You may remember, or may not have heard, how Macready +brought it out and put his foot on it, in the flush of a quarrel between +manager and author; and Phelps, knowing the whole secret and feeling +the power of the play, determined on making a revival of it in his own +theatre. Mr. Chorley called his acting "fine". . . .' + + + + + +Chapter 10 + +1849-1852 + +Death of Mr. Browning's Mother--Birth of his Son--Mrs. Browning's +Letters continued--Baths of Lucca--Florence again--Venice--Margaret +Fuller Ossoli--Visit to England--Winter in Paris--Carlyle--George +Sand--Alfred de Musset. + + +On March 9, 1849, Mr. Browning's son was born. With the joy of his +wife's deliverance from the dangers of such an event came also his +first great sorrow. His mother did not live to receive the news of +her grandchild's birth. The letter which conveyed it found her still +breathing, but in the unconsciousness of approaching death. There had +been no time for warning. The sister could only break the suddenness of +the shock. A letter of Mrs. Browning's tells what was to be told. + + +Florence: April 30 ('49). + +'. . . This is the first packet of letters, except one to Wimpole +Street, which I have written since my confinement. You will have +heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my +husband's mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart) +terminated in a fatal way--and she lay in the insensibility precursive +of the grave's when the letter written with such gladness by my poor +husband and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address. "It +would have made her heart bound," said her daughter to us. Poor tender +heart--the last throb was too near. The medical men would not allow +the news to be communicated. The next joy she felt was to be in heaven +itself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, and indeed, except +for the courageous consideration of his sister who wrote two letters of +preparation, saying "She was not well" and she "was very ill" when in +fact all was over, I am frightened to think what the result would have +been to him. He has loved his mother as such passionate natures only +can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down in an extremity of +sorrow--never. Even now, the depression is great--and sometimes when I +leave him alone a little and return to the room, I find him in tears. I +do earnestly wish to change the scene and air--but where to go? England +looks terrible now. He says it would break his heart to see his mother's +roses over the wall and the place where she used to lay her scissors and +gloves--which I understand so thoroughly that I can't say "Let us go to +England." We must wait and see what his father and sister will choose to +do, or choose us to do--for of course a duty plainly seen would draw us +anywhere. My own dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by any +change of plan--only they are too good and kind not to understand the +difficulty--not to see the motive. So do you, I am certain. It has been +very, very painful altogether, this drawing together of life and death. +Robert was too enraptured at my safety and with his little son, and the +sudden reaction was terrible. . . .' + + + +Bagni di Lucca. + +'. . . We have been wandering in search of cool air and a cool bough +among all the olive trees to build our summer nest on. My husband has +been suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to, in consequence +of the great mental shock of last March--loss of appetite, loss of +sleep--looks quite worn and altered. His spirits never rallied except +with an effort, and every letter from New Cross threw him back into deep +depression. I was very anxious, and feared much that the end of it +all would be (the intense heat of Florence assisting) nervous fever or +something similar; and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading +him to leave Florence for a month or two. He who generally delights in +travelling, had no mind for change or movement. I had to say and swear +that Baby and I couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would go +away. "Ce que femme veut, _homme_ veut," if the latter is at all amiable, +or the former persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreed +that we two should go on an exploring journey, to find out where we +could have most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with +his nurse and Wilson, while we were absent. We went along the coast to +Spezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through +the olive-forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnut +woods, glorious surprises of the most exquisite scenery. I say +olive-forests advisedly--the olive grows like a forest-tree in those +regions, shading the ground with tints of silvery network. The olive +near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise +a little too the Florentine vine, which does not swing such portcullises +of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole road +where we travelled. Beautiful indeed it was. Spezzia wheels the blue sea +into the arms of the wooded mountains; and we had a glance at Shelley's +house at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of course. I was not sorry +that the lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. We +returned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), +saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains, where rock river and +wood enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants drove us off by their +unreasonable prices. It is curious--but just in proportion to the +want of civilization the prices rise in Italy. If you haven't cups and +saucers, you are made to pay for plate. Well--so finding no rest for the +soles of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only +to see them. We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello, or some +safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest +prejudice against the Baths of Lucca; taking them for a sort of wasp's +nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden +flat by the continental English--yet, I wanted to see the place, because +it is a place to see, after all. So we came, and were so charmed by the +exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the coolness of the climate, and +the absence of our countrymen--political troubles serving admirably our +private requirements, that we made an offer for rooms on the spot, and +returned to Florence for Baby and the rest of our establishment +without further delay. Here we are then. We have been here more than +a fortnight. We have taken an apartment for the season--four months, +paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able to stay +till the end of October. The living is cheaper than even in Florence, so +that there has been no extravagance in coming here. In fact Florence is +scarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat by day and +night, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. We have +taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place--the highest house of the +highest of the three villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and +which lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by a +rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicale is all +the noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage-wheels cannot vex us, God +be thanked for it! The silence is full of joy and consolation. I think +my husband's spirits are better already, and his appetite improved. +Certainly little Babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. He +is out all day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it +that he is prettier than the whole population of babies here. . . . Then +my whole strength has wonderfully improved--just as my medical friends +prophesied,--and it seems like a dream when I find myself able to climb +the hills with Robert, and help him to lose himself in the forests. +Ever since my confinement I have been growing stronger and stronger, and +where it is to stop I can't tell really. I can do as much or more than +at any point of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of +the place seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: it +draws you, raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its +keenness--sheathed in Italian sunshine--think what that must be! And +the beauty and the solitude--for with a few paces we get free of +the habitations of men--all is delightful to me. What is peculiarly +beautiful and wonderful, is the variety of the shapes of the mountains. +They are a multitude--and yet there is no likeness. None, except where +the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the +rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that +bare peak which tilts against the sky--nor like the serpent-twine of +another which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. . . .' + + +She writes again: + + +Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49). + +'. . . I have performed a great exploit--ridden on a donkey five miles +deep into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not +far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with +Baby) on other donkies,--guides of course. We set off at eight in the +morning, and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle, +I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour +for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains could +have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, one +could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted +torrents--above and through the chestnut forests precipitous beyond +what you would think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the +ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, +satisfied us wholly, as we looked round on the world of innumerable +mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea--and not a human habitation. +. . .' + + +The following fragment, which I have received quite without date, might +refer to this or to a somewhat later period. + + +'If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved +health, and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people, of +how your wife walked here with you, and there with you, as if a wife +with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature."' + + + +Florence: Feb. 18 ('50). + +'. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live, +and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society +here. Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .' + + + +Florence: April 1 ('50). + +'. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, just sweeping +through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello looked out +to see the Duke go by--and just such a door where Tasso stood and where +Dante drew his chair out to sit. Strange to have all that old world life +about us, and the blue sky so bright. . . .' + + + +Venice: June 4 (probably '50). + +'. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice. +The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of so +celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of +water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting +silence, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up together and maintain +that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the +world. + +'Do you know when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. But +now comes the earth-side. + +'Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable and nervous, +unable to eat or sleep, and poor Wilson still worse, in a miserable +condition of sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices, so +exquisite and so bilious. Therefore I am constrained away from my joys +by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going away on Friday. +For myself, it did not affect me at all. Take the mild, soft, relaxing +climate--even the scirocco does not touch me. And the baby grows +gloriously fatter in spite of everything. . . . As for Venice, you can't +get even a "Times", much less an "Athenaeum". We comfort ourselves by +taking a box at the opera (a whole box on the grand tier, mind) for +two shillings and eightpence, English. Also, every evening at half-past +eight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of +St. Mark, taking excellent coffee and reading the French papers.' + + +If it were possible to draw more largely on Mrs. Browning's +correspondence for this year, it would certainly supply the record of +her intimacy, and that of her husband, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli. A +warm attachment sprang up between them during that lady's residence in +Florence. Its last evenings were all spent at their house; and, soon +after she had bidden them farewell, she availed herself of a two days' +delay in the departure of the ship to return from Leghorn and be with +them one evening more. She had what seemed a prophetic dread of the +voyage to America, though she attached no superstitious importance to +the prediction once made to her husband that he would be drowned; and +learned when it was too late to change her plans that her presence there +was, after all, unnecessary. Mr. Browning was deeply affected by the +news of her death by shipwreck, which took place on July 16, 1850; and +wrote an account of his acquaintance with her, for publication by her +friends. This also, unfortunately, was lost. Her son was of the same +age as his, little more than a year old; but she left a token of the +friendship which might some day have united them, in a small Bible +inscribed to the baby Robert, 'In memory of Angelo Ossoli.' + +The intended journey to England was delayed for Mr. Browning by the +painful associations connected with his mother's death; but in the +summer of 1851 he found courage to go there: and then, as on each +succeeding visit paid to London with his wife, he commemorated his +marriage in a manner all his own. He went to the church in which it had +been solemnized, and kissed the paving-stones in front of the door. It +needed all this love to comfort Mrs. Browning in the estrangement from +her father which was henceforth to be accepted as final. He had held no +communication with her since her marriage, and she knew that it was +not forgiven; but she had cherished a hope that he would so far relent +towards her as to kiss her child, even if he would not see her. Her +prayer to this effect remained, however, unanswered. + +In the autumn they proceeded to Paris; whence Mrs. Browning wrote, +October 22 and November 12. + + +138, Avenue des Champs Elysees. + +'. . . It was a long time before we could settle ourselves in a private +apartment. . . . At last we came off to these Champs Elysees, to a very +pleasant apartment, the window looking over a large terrace (almost +large enough to serve the purpose of a garden) to the great drive and +promenade of the Parisians when they come out of the streets to sun +and shade and show themselves off among the trees. A pretty little +dining-room, a writing and dressing-room for Robert beside it, a +drawing-room beyond that, with two excellent bedrooms, and third +bedroom for a "femme de menage", kitchen, &c. . . . So this answers all +requirements, and the sun suns us loyally as in duty bound considering +the southern aspect, and we are glad to find ourselves settled for six +months. We have had lovely weather, and have seen a fire only yesterday +for the first time since we left England. . . . We have seen nothing in +Paris, except the shell of it. Yet, two evenings ago we hazarded going +to a reception at Lady Elgin's, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and saw +some French, but nobody of distinction. + +'It is a good house, I believe, and she has an earnest face which must +mean something. We were invited to go every Monday between eight and +twelve. We go on Friday to Madame Mohl's, where we are to have some of +the "celebrites". . . . Carlyle, for instance, I liked infinitely more +in his personality than I expected to like him, and I saw a great deal +of him, for he travelled with us to Paris, and spent several evenings +with us, we three together. He is one of the most interesting men I +could imagine, even deeply interesting to me; and you come to understand +perfectly when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and +his scorn, sensibility. Highly picturesque, too, he is in conversation; +the talk of writing men is very seldom so good. + +'And, do you know, I was much taken, in London, with a young authoress, +Geraldine Jewsbury. You have read her books. . . . She herself is quiet +and simple, and drew my heart out of me a good deal. I felt inclined to +love her in our half-hour's intercourse. . . .' + + + +138, Avenue des Champs Elysees: (Nov. 12). + +'. . . Robert's father and sister have been paying us a visit during the +last three weeks. They are very affectionate to me, and I love them for +his sake and their own, and am very sorry at the thought of losing them, +as we are on the point of doing. We hope, however, to establish them in +Paris, if we can stay, and if no other obstacle should arise before the +spring, when they must leave Hatcham. Little Wiedemann 'draws', as you +may suppose . . . he is adored by his grandfather, and then, Robert! +They are an affectionate family, and not easy when removed one from +another. . . .' + + +On their journey from London to Paris, Mr. and Mrs. Browning had been +joined by Carlyle; and it afterwards struck Mr. Browning as strange +that, in the 'Life' of Carlyle, their companionship on this occasion +should be spoken of as the result of a chance meeting. Carlyle not only +went to Paris with the Brownings, but had begged permission to do so; +and Mrs. Browning had hesitated to grant this because she was afraid her +little boy would be tiresome to him. Her fear, however, proved mistaken. +The child's prattle amused the philosopher, and led him on one occasion +to say: 'Why, sir, you have as many aspirations as Napoleon!' At +Paris he would have been miserable without Mr. Browning's help, in his +ignorance of the language, and impatience of the discomforts which this +created for him. He couldn't ask for anything, he complained, but they +brought him the opposite. + +On one occasion Mr. Carlyle made a singular remark. He was walking with +Mr. Browning, either in Paris or the neighbouring country, when they +passed an image of the Crucifixion; and glancing towards the figure of +Christ, he said, with his deliberate Scotch utterance, 'Ah, poor fellow, +_your_ part is played out!' + +Two especially interesting letters are dated from the same address, +February 15 and April 7, 1852. + + +'. . . Beranger lives close to us, and Robert has seen him in his white +hat, wandering along the asphalte. I had a notion, somehow, that he was +very old, but he is only elderly--not much above sixty (which is the +prime of life, nowadays) and he lives quietly and keeps out of scrapes +poetical and political, and if Robert and I had a little less modesty we +are assured that we should find access to him easy. But we can't make +up our minds to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrant +minstrels, when he may probably not know our names. We could never +follow the fashion of certain authors, who send their books about with +intimations of their being likely to be acceptable or not--of which +practice poor Tennyson knows too much for his peace. If, indeed, a +letter of introduction to Beranger were vouchsafed to us from any benign +quarter, we should both be delighted, but we must wait patiently for +the influence of the stars. Meanwhile, we have at last sent our letter +[Mazzini's] to George Sand, accompanied with a little note signed by +both of us, though written by me, as seemed right, being the woman. We +half-despaired in doing this--for it is most difficult, it appears, +to get at her, she having taken vows against seeing strangers, in +consequence of various annoyances and persecutions, in and out of print, +which it's the mere instinct of a woman to avoid--I can understand it +perfectly. Also, she is in Paris for only a few days, and under a new +name, to escape from the plague of her notoriety. People said, "She will +never see you--you have no chance, I am afraid." But we determined +to try. At least I pricked Robert up to the leap--for he was really +inclined to sit in his chair and be proud a little. "No," said I, "you +_sha'n't_ be proud, and I _won't_ be proud, and we _will_ see her--I won't +die, if I can help it, without seeing George Sand." So we gave our +letter to a friend, who was to give it to a friend who was to place it +in her hands--her abode being a mystery, and the name she used unknown. +The next day came by the post this answer: + +'"Madame, j'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche prochain, rue +Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; et encore +je n'en suis pas absolument certaine--mais je ferai tellement mon +possible, que ma bonne etoile m'y aidera peut-etre un peu. Agreez +mille remerciments de coeur ainsi que Monsieur Browning, que j'espere +voir avec vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez. George Sand. +Paris: 12 fevrier '52." + +'This is graceful and kind, is it not?--and we are going to-morrow--I, +rather at the risk of my life, but I shall roll myself up head and all +in a thick shawl, and we shall go in a close carriage, and I hope I +shall be able to tell you the result before shutting up this letter. + +'Monday.--I have seen G. S. She received us in a room with a bed in it, +the only room she has to occupy, I suppose, during her short stay in +Paris. She received us very cordially with her hand held out, which +I, in the emotion of the moment, stooped and kissed--upon which she +exclaimed, "Mais non! je ne veux pas," and kissed me. I don't think +she is a great deal taller than I am,--yes, taller, but not a great +deal--and a little over-stout for that height. The upper part of the +face is fine, the forehead, eyebrows and eyes--dark glowing eyes as they +should be; the lower part not so good. The beautiful teeth project a +little, flashing out the smile of the large characteristic mouth, and +the chin recedes. It never could have been a beautiful face Robert and +I agree, but noble and expressive it has been and is. The complexion is +olive, quite without colour; the hair, black and glossy, divided with +evident care and twisted back into a knot behind the head, and she wore +no covering to it. Some of the portraits represent her in ringlets, and +ringlets would be much more becoming to the style of face, I fancy, for +the cheeks are rather over-full. She was dressed in a sort of woollen +grey gown, with a jacket of the same material (according to the ruling +fashion), the gown fastened up to the throat, with a small linen +collarette, and plain white muslin sleeves buttoned round the wrists. +The hands offered to me were small and well-shaped. Her manners were +quite as simple as her costume. I never saw a simpler woman. Not a shade +of affectation or consciousness, even--not a suffusion of coquetry, not +a cigarette to be seen! Two or three young men were sitting with her, +and I observed the profound respect with which they listened to every +word she said. She spoke rapidly, with a low, unemphatic voice. Repose +of manner is much more her characteristic than animation is--only, +under all the quietness, and perhaps by means of it, you are aware of an +intense burning soul. She kissed me again when we went away. . . .' + + + +'April 7.--George Sand we came to know a great deal more of. I think +Robert saw her six times. Once he met her near the Tuileries, offered +her his arm and walked with her the whole length of the gardens. She was +not on that occasion looking as well as usual, being a little too much +"endimanchee" in terrestrial lavenders and super-celestial blues--not, +in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in her +at other times. Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and the +fashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are respectable in all the +"Ladies' Companions" of the day) make the only approach to masculine +wearings to be observed in her. + +'She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think--and +the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood. + +'Ah! but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I could only go with +Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. He was really +very good and kind to let me go at all after he found the sort of +society rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, but being the +prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires, and yielded the point. +She seems to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regards +society--crowds of ill-bred men who adore her, 'a genoux bas', betwixt +a puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva--society of the ragged red, +diluted with the low theatrical. She herself so different, so apart, so +alone in her melancholy disdain. I was deeply interested in that poor +woman. I felt a profound compassion for her. I did not mind much +even the Greek, in Greek costume, who 'tutoyed' her, and kissed her I +believe, so Robert said--or the other vulgar man of the theatre, who +went down on his knees and called her "sublime". "Caprice d'amitie," +said she with her quiet, gentle scorn. A noble woman under the mud, be +certain. _I_ would kneel down to her, too, if she would leave it all, +throw it off, and be herself as God made her. But she would not care for +my kneeling--she does not care for me. Perhaps she doesn't care much +for anybody by this time, who knows? She wrote one or two or three kind +notes to me, and promised to 'venir m'embrasser' before she left Paris, +but she did not come. We both tried hard to please her, and she told a +friend of ours that she "liked us". Only we always felt that we couldn't +penetrate--couldn't really _touch_ her--it was all vain. + +'Alfred de Musset was to have been at M. Buloz' where Robert was a +week ago, on purpose to meet him, but he was prevented in some way. His +brother, Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead, but +we hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? He is +not capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, +I assure you. . . . We are expecting a visit from Lamartine, who does a +great deal of honour to both of us in the way of appreciation, and was +kind enough to propose to come. I will tell you all about it.' + + +Mr. Browning fully shared his wife's impression of a want of frank +cordiality on George Sand's part; and was especially struck by it in +reference to himself, with whom it seemed more natural that she should +feel at ease. He could only imagine that his studied courtesy towards +her was felt by her as a rebuke to the latitude which she granted to +other men. + +Another eminent French writer whom he much wished to know was Victor +Hugo, and I am told that for years he carried about him a letter of +introduction from Lord Houghton, always hoping for an opportunity of +presenting it. The hope was not fulfilled, though, in 1866, Mr. Browning +crossed to Saint Malo by the Channel Islands and spent three days in +Jersey. + + + + +Chapter 11 + +1852-1855 + +M. Joseph Milsand--His close Friendship with Mr. Browning; Mrs. +Browning's Impression of him--New Edition of Mr. Browning's +Poems--'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'--'Essay' on Shelley--Summer in +London--Dante Gabriel Rossetti--Florence; secluded Life--Letters from +Mr. and Mrs. Browning--'Colombe's Birthday'--Baths of Lucca--Mrs. +Browning's Letters--Winter in Rome--Mr. and Mrs. Story--Mrs. +Sartoris--Mrs. Fanny Kemble--Summer in London--Tennyson--Ruskin. + + + +It was during this winter in Paris that Mr. Browning became acquainted +with M. Joseph Milsand, the second Frenchman with whom he was to be +united by ties of deep friendship and affection. M. Milsand was at that +time, and for long afterwards, a frequent contributor to the 'Revue +des Deux Mondes'; his range of subjects being enlarged by his, for +a Frenchman, exceptional knowledge of English life, language, and +literature. He wrote an article on Quakerism, which was much approved by +Mr. William Forster, and a little volume on Ruskin called 'L'Esthetique +Anglaise', which was published in the 'Bibliotheque de Philosophie +Contemporaine'.* Shortly before the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Browning +in Paris, he had accidentally seen an extract from 'Paracelsus'. This +struck him so much that he procured the two volumes of the works and +'Christmas Eve', and discussed the whole in the 'Revue' as the second +part of an essay entitled 'La Poesie Anglaise depuis Byron'. Mr. +Browning saw the article, and was naturally touched at finding his poems +the object of serious study in a foreign country, while still so little +regarded in his own. It was no less natural that this should lead to +a friendship which, the opening once given, would have grown up +unassisted, at least on Mr. Browning's side; for M. Milsand united the +qualities of a critical intellect with a tenderness, a loyalty, and a +simplicity of nature seldom found in combination with them. + + * He published also an admirable little work on the + requirements of secondary education in France, equally + applicable in many respects to any country and to any time. + +The introduction was brought about by the daughter of William Browning, +Mrs. Jebb-Dyke, or more directly by Mr. and Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who +were among the earliest friends of the Browning family in Paris. M. +Milsand was soon an 'habitue' of Mr. Browning's house, as somewhat later +of that of his father and sister; and when, many years afterwards, Miss +Browning had taken up her abode in England, he spent some weeks of the +early summer in Warwick Crescent, whenever his home duties or personal +occupations allowed him to do so. Several times also the poet and his +sister joined him at Saint-Aubin, the seaside village in Normandy which +was his special resort, and where they enjoyed the good offices of +Madame Milsand, a home-staying, genuine French wife and mother, well +acquainted with the resources of its very primitive life. M. Milsand +died, in 1886, of apoplexy, the consequence, I believe, of heart-disease +brought on by excessive cold-bathing. The first reprint of 'Sordello', +in 1863, had been, as is well known, dedicated to him. The 'Parleyings', +published within a year of his death, were inscribed to his memory. Mr. +Browning's affection for him finds utterance in a few strong words which +I shall have occasion to quote. An undated fragment concerning him from +Mrs. Browning to her sister-in-law, points to a later date than the +present, but may as well be inserted here. + + +'. . . I quite love M. Milsand for being interested in Penini. What a +perfect creature he is, to be sure! He always stands in the top place +among our gods--Give him my cordial regards, always, mind. . . . +He wants, I think--the only want of that noble nature--the sense of +spiritual relation; and also he puts under his feet too much the worth +of impulse and passion, in considering the powers of human nature. For +the rest, I don't know such a man. He has intellectual conscience--or +say--the conscience of the intellect, in a higher degree than I ever +saw in any man of any country--and this is no less Robert's belief than +mine. When we hear the brilliant talkers and noisy thinkers here and +there and everywhere, we go back to Milsand with a real reverence. Also, +I never shall forget his delicacy to me personally, nor his tenderness +of heart about my child. . . .' + + +The criticism was inevitable from the point of view of Mrs. Browning's +nature and experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it if +she had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never have agreed with +her as to the authority of 'impulse and passion', but I am sure he did +not underrate their importance as factors in human life. + +M. Milsand was one of the few readers of Browning with whom I have +talked about him, who had studied his work from the beginning, and had +realized the ambition of his first imaginative flights. He was +more perplexed by the poet's utterance in later years. 'Quel homme +extraordinaire!' he once said to me; 'son centre n'est pas au milieu.' +The usual criticism would have been that, while his own centre was in +the middle, he did not seek it in the middle for the things of which +he wrote; but I remember that, at the moment in which the words were +spoken, they impressed me as full of penetration. Mr. Browning had so +much confidence in M. Milsand's linguistic powers that he invariably +sent him his proof-sheets for final revision, and was exceedingly +pleased with such few corrections as his friend was able to suggest. + +With the name of Milsand connects itself in the poet's life that of a +younger, but very genuine friend of both, M. Gustave Dourlans: a man of +fine critical and intellectual powers, unfortunately neutralized by bad +health. M. Dourlans also became a visitor at Warwick Crescent, and a +frequent correspondent of Mr. or rather of Miss Browning. He came from +Paris once more, to witness the last sad scene in Westminster Abbey. + +The first three years of Mr. Browning's married life had been +unproductive from a literary point of view. The realization and +enjoyment of the new companionship, the duties as well as interests +of the dual existence, and, lastly, the shock and pain of his mother's +death, had absorbed his mental energies for the time being. But by the +close of 1848 he had prepared for publication in the following year a +new edition of 'Paracelsus' and the 'Bells and Pomegranates' poems. The +reprint was in two volumes, and the publishers were Messrs. Chapman and +Hall; the system, maintained through Mr. Moxon, of publication at the +author's expense, being abandoned by Mr. Browning when he left home. +Mrs. Browning writes of him on this occasion that he is paying 'peculiar +attention to the objections made against certain obscurities.' He +himself prefaced the edition by these words: 'Many of these pieces were +out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from circulation, when the +corrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was prepared. The +various Poems and Dramas have received the author's most careful +revision. December 1848.' + +In 1850, in Florence, he wrote 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; and +in December 1851, in Paris, the essay on Shelley, to be prefixed to +twenty-five supposed letters of that poet, published by Moxon in 1852.* + + * They were discovered, not long afterwards, to be spurious, + and the book suppressed. + +The reading of this Essay might serve to correct the frequent +misapprehension of Mr. Browning's religious views which has been +based on the literal evidence of 'Christmas Eve', were it not that its +companion poem has failed to do so; though the tendency of 'Easter Day' +is as different from that of its precursor as their common Christianity +admits. The balance of argument in 'Christmas Eve' is in favour of +direct revelation of religious truth and prosaic certainty regarding it; +while the 'Easter Day' vision makes a tentative and unresting attitude +the first condition of the religious life; and if Mr. Browning has meant +to say--as he so often did say--that religious certainties are required +for the undeveloped mind, but that the growing religious intelligence +walks best by a receding light, he denies the positive basis of +Christian belief, and is no more orthodox in the one set of reflections +than in the other. The spirit, however, of both poems is ascetic: for +the first divorces religious worship from every appeal to the poetic +sense; the second refuses to recognize, in poetry or art, or the +attainments of the intellect, or even in the best human love, any +practical correspondence with religion. The dissertation on Shelley is, +what 'Sordello' was, what its author's treatment of poets and poetry +always must be--an indirect vindication of the conceptions of human life +which 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day' condemns. This double poem stands +indeed so much alone in Mr. Browning's work that we are tempted to ask +ourselves to what circumstance or impulse, external or internal, it has +been due; and we can only conjecture that the prolonged communion with +a mind so spiritual as that of his wife, the special sympathies and +differences which were elicited by it, may have quickened his religious +imagination, while directing it towards doctrinal or controversial +issues which it had not previously embraced. + +The 'Essay' is a tribute to the genius of Shelley; it is also a +justification of his life and character, as the balance of evidence then +presented them to Mr. Browning's mind. It rests on a definition of the +respective qualities of the objective and the subjective poet. . . . +While both, he says, are gifted with the fuller perception of nature and +man, the one endeavours to + +'reproduce things external (whether the phenomena of the scenic +universe, or the manifested action of the human heart and brain) with an +immediate reference, in every case, to the common eye and apprehension +of his fellow-men, assumed capable of receiving and profiting by this +reproduction'--the other 'is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, +not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, +the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute +truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by +the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees--the 'Ideas' +of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand--it is +toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in +action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he +digs where he stands,--preferring to seek them in his own soul as the +nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of +which he desires to perceive and speak.' + +The objective poet is therefore a fashioner, the subjective is best +described as a seer. The distinction repeats itself in the interest with +which we study their respective lives. We are glad of the biography of +the objective poet because it reveals to us the power by which he works; +we desire still more that of the subjective poet, because it presents us +with another aspect of the work itself. The poetry of such a one is an +effluence much more than a production; it is + +'the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but +not separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily +approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it we apprehend +him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him.' + +The reason of Mr. Browning's prolonged and instinctive reverence +for Shelley is thus set forth in the opening pages of the Essay: he +recognized in his writings the quality of a 'subjective' poet; hence, as +he understands the word, the evidence of a divinely inspired man. + +Mr. Browning goes on to say that we need the recorded life in order +quite to determine to which class of inspiration a given work belongs; +and though he regards the work of Shelley as carrying its warrant within +itself, his position leaves ample room for a withdrawal of faith, a +reversal of judgment, if the ascertained facts of the poet's life should +at any future time bear decided witness against him. He is also careful +to avoid drawing too hard and fast a line between the two opposite kinds +of poet. He admits that a pure instance of either is seldom to be found; +he sees no reason why + +'these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter from the same +poet in successive perfect works. . . . A mere running-in of the one +faculty upon the other' being, meanwhile, 'the ordinary circumstance.' + +I venture, however, to think, that in his various and necessary +concessions, he lets slip the main point; and for the simple reason that +it is untenable. The terms 'subjective' and 'objective' denote a real +and very important difference on the ground of judgment, but one +which tends more and more to efface itself in the sphere of the higher +creative imagination. Mr. Browning might as briefly, and I think more +fully, have expressed the salient quality of his poet, even while he +could describe it in these emphatic words: + +'I pass at once, therefore, from Shelley's minor excellencies to his +noblest and predominating characteristic. + +'This I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the +absolute, and of Beauty and Good in the concrete, while he throws, from +his poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous +films for the connexion of each with each, than have been thrown by any +modern artificer of whom I have knowledge . . . I would rather consider +Shelley's poetry as a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment +of the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the +spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal than . . .' + +This essay has, in common with the poems of the preceding years, the +one quality of a largely religious and, in a certain sense, Christian +spirit, and in this respect it falls naturally into the general series +of its author's works. The assertion of Platonic ideas suggests, +however, a mood of spiritual thought for which the reference in +'Pauline' has been our only, and a scarcely sufficient preparation; nor +could the most definite theism to be extracted from Platonic beliefs +ever satisfy the human aspirations which, in a nature like that of +Robert Browning, culminate in the idea of God. The metaphysical aspect +of the poet's genius here distinctly reappears for the first time since +'Sordello', and also for the last. It becomes merged in the simpler +forms of the religious imagination. + +The justification of the man Shelley, to which great part of the Essay +is devoted, contains little that would seem new to his more recent +apologists; little also which to the writer's later judgments continued +to recommend itself as true. It was as a great poetic artist, not as a +great poet, that the author of 'Prometheus' and 'The Cenci', of 'Julian +and Maddalo', and 'Epipsychidion' was finally to rank in Mr. Browning's +mind. The whole remains nevertheless a memorial of a very touching +affection; and whatever intrinsic value the Essay may possess, its main +interest must always be biographical. Its motive and inspiration are set +forth in the closing lines: + +'It is because I have long held these opinions in assurance and +gratitude, that I catch at the opportunity offered to me of expressing +them here; knowing that the alacrity to fulfil an humble office conveys +more love than the acceptance of the honour of a higher one, and that +better, therefore, than the signal service it was the dream of my +boyhood to render to his fame and memory, may be the saying of a few, +inadequate words upon these scarcely more important supplementary +letters of _Shelley_.' + +If Mr. Browning had seen reason to doubt the genuineness of the letters +in question, his Introduction could not have been written. That, while +receiving them as genuine, he thought them unimportant, gave it, as he +justly discerned, its full significance. + +Mr. and Mrs. Browning returned to London for the summer of 1852, and we +have a glimpse of them there in a letter from Mr. Fox to his daughter. + + +July 16, '52. + +'. . . I had a charming hour with the Brownings yesterday; more +fascinated with her than ever. She talked lots of George Sand, and so +beautifully. Moreover she silver-electroplated Louis Napoleon!! They are +lodging at 58 Welbeck Street; the house has a queer name on the door, +and belongs to some Belgian family. + +'They came in late one night, and R. B. says that in the morning +twilight he saw three portraits on the bedroom wall, and speculated who +they might be. Light gradually showed the first, Beatrice Cenci, "Good!" +said he; "in a poetic region." More light: the second, Lord Byron! Who +can the third be? And what think you it was, but your sketch (engraved +chalk portrait) of me? He made quite a poem and picture of the affair. + +'She seems much better; did not put her hand before her mouth, which I +took as a compliment: and the young Florentine was gracious . . .' + + +It need hardly be said that this valued friend was one of the first whom +Mr. Browning introduced to his wife, and that she responded with ready +warmth to his claims on her gratitude and regard. More than one joint +letter from herself and her husband commemorates this new phase of the +intimacy; one especially interesting was written from Florence in 1858, +in answer to the announcement by Mr. Fox of his election for Oldham; and +Mr. Browning's contribution, which is very characteristic, will appear +in due course. + +Either this or the preceding summer brought Mr. Browning for the first +time into personal contact with an early lover of his works: Mr. D. +G. Rossetti. They had exchanged letters a year or two before, on the +subject of 'Pauline', which Rossetti (as I have already mentioned) had +read in ignorance of its origin, but with the conviction that only the +author of 'Paracelsus' could have produced it. He wrote to Mr. Browning +to ascertain the fact, and to tell him he had admired the poem so much +as to transcribe it whole from the British Museum copy. He now called +on him with Mr. William Allingham; and doubly recommended himself to the +poet's interest by telling him that he was a painter. When Mr. Browning +was again in London, in 1855, Rossetti began painting his portrait, +which he finished in Paris in the ensuing winter. + +The winter of 1852-3 saw the family once more in Florence, and at Casa +Guidi, where the routine of quiet days was resumed. Mrs. Browning +has spoken in more than one of her letters of the comparative social +seclusion in which she and her husband had elected to live. This +seclusion was much modified in later years, and many well-known English +and American names become associated with their daily life. It referred +indeed almost entirely to their residence in Florence, where they found +less inducement to enter into society than in London, Paris, and Rome. +But it is on record that during the fifteen years of his married life, +Mr. Browning never dined away from home, except on one occasion--an +exception proving the rule; and we cannot therefore be surprised that +he should subsequently have carried into the experience of an unshackled +and very interesting social intercourse, a kind of freshness which a man +of fifty has not generally preserved. + +The one excitement which presented itself in the early months of 1853 +was the production of 'Colombe's Birthday'. The first allusion to this +comes to us in a letter from the poet to Lady, then Mrs. Theodore, +Martin, from which I quote a few passages. + + +Florence: Jan. 31, '53. + +'My dear Mrs. Martin,--. . . be assured that I, for my part, have +been in no danger of forgetting my promises any more than your +performances--which were admirable of all kinds. I shall be delighted if +you can do anything for "Colombe"--do what you think best with it, and +for me--it will be pleasant to be in such hands--only, pray follow +the corrections in the last edition--(Chapman and Hall will give you a +copy)--as they are important to the sense. As for the condensation into +three acts--I shall leave that, and all cuttings and the like, to your +own judgment--and, come what will, I shall have to be grateful to you, +as before. For the rest, you will play the part to heart's content, I +_know_. . . . And how good it will be to see you again, and make my wife +see you too--she who "never saw a great actress" she says--unless it was +Dejazet! . . .' + + +Mrs. Browning writes about the performance, April 12: + + +'. . . I am beginning to be anxious about 'Colombe's Birthday'. I care +much more about it than Robert does. He says that no one will mistake it +for his speculation; it's Mr. Buckstone's affair altogether. True--but I +should like it to succeed, being Robert's play, notwithstanding. But the +play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous about +it. On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know,--and what +in the world made them select it, if it is not likely to answer their +purpose? By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been +"prepared for the stage by the author." Don't believe a word of it. +Robert just said "yes" when they wrote to ask him, and not a line +of communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, +suggested nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his new +edition, and that was the whole. . . .' + + +She communicates the result in May: + + +'. . . Yes, Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a +play of that kind. It was a "succes d'estime" and something more, which +is surprising perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss +Faucit was alone in doing us justice. . . .' + + +Mrs. Browning did see 'Miss Faucit' on her next visit to England. She +agreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone, one morning, +at her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half. The only +person who had 'done justice' to 'Colombe' besides contributing to +whatever success her husband's earlier plays had obtained, was much more +than 'a great actress' to Mrs. Browning's mind; and we may imagine +it would have gone hard with her before she renounced the pleasure of +making her acquaintance. + +Two letters, dated from the Baths of Lucca, July 15 and August 20, '53, +tell how and where the ensuing summer was passed, besides introducing +us, for the first time, to Mr. and Mrs. William Story, between whose +family and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was ever +afterwards to subsist. + + +July 15. + +'. . . We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a little +holy fear of the company there--but the scenery, and the coolness, and +convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three +months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of +not calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we were +there four years ago just after the birth of our child. The mountains +are wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some +work. + +'Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with it +the idea of home. . . .' + + + +Casa Tolomei, Alta Villa, Bagni di Lucca: Aug. 20. + +'. . . We are enjoying the mountains here--riding the donkeys in the +footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful. +The strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer, through +growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in +the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, and the +peasants sell them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends Mr. and +Mrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of +Judge Story, the biographer of his father, and for himself, sculptor and +poet--and she a sympathetic graceful woman, fresh and innocent in +face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one +another's houses. + +'. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion to +a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. +We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down +various precipices--but the scenery was exquisite--past speaking of for +beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite +beasts and setting their teeth against the sky--it was wonderful. . . .' + + +Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was 'In a Balcony'; also, +probably, some of the 'Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration in +'By the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge to which +he walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton, was +also an incident of this summer. + +The next three letters from which I am able to quote, describe the +impressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome. + + +Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 30 piano. Jan. 18, 54. + +'. . . Well, we are all well to begin with--and have been well--our +troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey +of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery +and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way--that +passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the +highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually--for +the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and +scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys--how +they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at +the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that +we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home,--and +we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning +before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant +with a message, "the boy was in convulsions--there was danger." We +hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! +All that first day we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never +rallied--never opened his eyes in consciousness--and by eight in the +evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our +house--could not be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever, +with a tendency to the brain--and within two days her life was almost +despaired of--exactly the same malady as her brother's. . . . Also the +English nurse was apparently dying at the Story's house, and Emma Page, +the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease. + +'. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once that the +three patients recovered--only in poor little Edith's case Roman +fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since in periodical +recurrence. She is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to +life, but it is exhausting. . . . Now you will understand what ghostly +flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by +a death-bed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe +is laid close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph) +and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the +carriage together--I am horribly weak about such things--I can't look +on the earth-side of death--I flinch from corpses and graves, and never +meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards +I look _over_ death, and upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So that +it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the +poor stricken mother sat so calmly--not to drop from the seat. Well--all +this has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars in the +old strain of thought--the antique words get muddled and blurred with +warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome +is spoilt to me--there's the truth. Still, one lives through one's +associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying +some things--the climate, for instance, which, though pernicious to the +general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue +sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins. +. . . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do +work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, hear excellent +music at Mrs. Sartoris's (A. K.) once or twice a week, and have Fanny +Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. +This is pleasant. I like her decidedly. + +'If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust swept out +of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides! . . .' + + + +Rome: March 29. + +'. . . We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, +especially Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair +and radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic, +unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought and +convention--but noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. She +thinks me credulous and full of dreams--but does not despise me for +that reason--which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for I +should not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and +generous--her milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy family +relations, which poor Fanny Kemble's has not had. Mrs. Sartoris' house +has the best society in Rome--and exquisite music of course. We met +Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him--more than I +do--because of the access of cold weather lately which has kept me at +home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside, on a day's excursion with +him and the Sartorises--and I hear found favour in his sight. Said the +critic, "I like Browning--he isn't at all like a damned literary man." +That's a compliment, I believe, according to your dictionary. It made me +laugh and think of you directly. . . . Robert has been sitting for his +picture to Mr. Fisher, the English artist who painted Mr. Kenyon and +Landor. You remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house in London. +Well, he has painted Robert's, and it is an admirable likeness. The +expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic. . . .' + + +May 19. + +'. . . To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don't +pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome, a +watering-place written over the antique, and I haven't taken to it as a +poet should I suppose. And let us speak the truth above all things. I +am strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the place +have not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child, the +light of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him. . . . +The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the two +sisters, who are charming and excellent both of them, in different ways, +and certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna, +upon picnic excursions--they, and certain of their friends; for +instance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, who is witty +and agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, who is an agreeable +man, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too +brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirely +with the mayonnaise and champagne. . . .' + + +It must have been on one of the excursions here described that an +incident took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristic +comments in a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnic +party had strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was not +strong enough to join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, +stayed with her; which act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble to +exclaim that he was the only man she had ever known who behaved like a +Christian to his wife. She was, when he wrote this letter, reading his +works for the first time, and had expressed admiration for them; but, he +continued, none of the kind things she said to him on that subject could +move him as did those words in the Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would have +modified her statement in later years, for the sake of one English and +one American husband now closely related to her. Even then, perhaps, she +did not make it without inward reserve. But she will forgive me, I am +sure, for having repeated it. + +Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, and +says: 'I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener than +is set down, but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked her +extremely.' + +Another of Mrs. Browning's letters is written from Florence, June 6 +('54): + + +'. . . We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go +northward. I love Florence--the place looks exquisitely beautiful in +its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the +nightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another, +there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a +place to live in--cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the +limits of civilization yet out of the crush of it. . . . We have spent +two delicious evenings at villas outside the gates, one with young +Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think. I like him +. . . we both do . . . from the bottom of our hearts. Then, our friend, +Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again. + +. . . . . + +'. . . Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most of +her time with us . . . singing passionately and talking eloquently. She +is really charming. . . .' + + +I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of the +winter of 1854-5. In all probability Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in, +or as near as possible to, Florence, since their income was still too +limited for continuous travelling. They possibly talked of going to +England, but postponed it till the following year; we know that they +went there in 1855, taking his sister with them as they passed through +Paris. They did not this time take lodgings for the summer months, +but hired a house at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square; and there, on +September 27, Tennyson read his new poem, 'Maud', to Mrs. Browning, +while Rossetti, the only other person present besides the family, +privately drew his likeness in pen and ink. The likeness has become well +known; the unconscious sitter must also, by this time, be acquainted +with it; but Miss Browning thinks no one except herself, who was near +Rossetti at the table, was at the moment aware of its being made. All +eyes must have been turned towards Tennyson, seated by his hostess on +the sofa. Miss Arabel Barrett was also of the party. + +Some interesting words of Mrs. Browning's carry their date in the +allusion to Mr. Ruskin; but I cannot ascertain it more precisely: + + +'We went to Denmark Hill yesterday to have luncheon with them, and see +the Turners, which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, and +so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest,--refined and truthful. I like +him very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances made +this year in England.' + + + + + +Chapter 12 + +1855-1858 + +'Men and Women'--'Karshook'--'Two in the Campagna'--Winter in +Paris; Lady Elgin--'Aurora Leigh'--Death of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. +Barrett--Penini--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Browning--The +Florentine Carnival--Baths of Lucca--Spiritualism--Mr. Kirkup; Count +Ginnasi--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox--Havre. + + + +The beautiful 'One Word More' was dated from London in September; and +the fifty poems gathered together under the title of 'Men and Women' +were published before the close of the year, in two volumes, by Messrs. +Chapman and Hall.* They are all familiar friends to Mr. Browning's +readers, in their first arrangement and appearance, as in later +redistributions and reprints; but one curious little fact concerning +them is perhaps not generally known. In the eighth line of the +fourteenth section of 'One Word More' they were made to include +'Karshook (Ben Karshook's Wisdom)', which never was placed amongst them. +It was written in April 1854; and the dedication of the volume must have +been, as it so easily might be, in existence, before the author decided +to omit it. The wrong name, once given, was retained, I have no doubt, +from preference for its terminal sound; and 'Karshook' only became +'Karshish' in the Tauchnitz copy of 1872, and in the English edition of +1889. + + * The date is given in the edition of 1868 as London 185-; + in the Tauchnitz selection of 1872, London and Florence 184- + and 185-; in the new English edition 184-and 185-. + +'Karshook' appeared in 1856 in 'The Keepsake', edited by Miss Power; +but, as we are told on good authority, has been printed in no edition or +selection of the Poet's works. I am therefore justified in inserting it +here. + + I + + 'Would a man 'scape the rod?' + Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, + 'See that he turn to God + The day before his death.' + + 'Ay, could a man inquire + When it shall come!' I say. + The Rabbi's eye shoots fire-- + 'Then let him turn to-day!' + + + II + + Quoth a young Sadducee: + 'Reader of many rolls, + Is it so certain we + Have, as they tell us, souls?' + + 'Son, there is no reply!' + The Rabbi bit his beard: + 'Certain, a soul have _I_-- + _We_ may have none,' he sneer'd. + + Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, + The Right-hand Temple-column, + Taught babes in grace their grammar, + And struck the simple, solemn. + +Among this first collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called +'Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of a +restless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened and +perplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that should +impress one as more purely dramatic ever fell from Mr. Browning's +pen. We are told, nevertheless, in Mr. Sharp's 'Life', that a personal +character no less actual than that of the 'Guardian Angel' has been +claimed for it. The writer, with characteristic delicacy, evades all +discussion of the question; but he concedes a great deal in his manner +of doing so. The poem, he says, conveys a sense of that necessary +isolation of the individual soul which resists the fusing power of +the deepest love; and its meaning cannot be personally--because it is +universally--true. I do not think Mr. Browning meant to emphasize this +aspect of the mystery of individual life, though the poem, in a certain +sense, expresses it. We have no reason to believe that he ever accepted +it as constant; and in no case could he have intended to refer its +conditions to himself. He was often isolated by the processes of his +mind; but there was in him no barrier to that larger emotional sympathy +which we think of as sympathy of the soul. If this poem were true, 'One +Word More' would be false, quite otherwise than in that approach to +exaggeration which is incidental to the poetic form. The true keynote +of 'Two in the Campagna' is the pain of perpetual change, and of the +conscious, though unexplained, predestination to it. Mr. Browning could +have still less in common with such a state, since one of the qualities +for which he was most conspicuous was the enormous power of anchorage +which his affections possessed. Only length of time and variety of +experience could fully test this power or fully display it; but the +signs of it had not been absent from even his earliest life. He loved +fewer people in youth than in advancing age: nature and circumstance +combined to widen the range, and vary the character of his human +interests; but where once love or friendship had struck a root, only a +moral convulsion could avail to dislodge it. I make no deduction from +this statement when I admit that the last and most emphatic words of the +poem in question, + + Only I discern-- + Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn, + +did probably come from the poet's heart, as they also found a deep echo +in that of his wife, who much loved them. + +From London they returned to Paris for the winter of 1855-6. The younger +of the Kemble sisters, Mrs. Sartoris, was also there with her family; +and the pleasant meetings of the Campagna renewed themselves for Mr. +Browning, though in a different form. He was also, with his sister, +a constant visitor at Lady Elgin's. Both they and Mrs. Browning were +greatly attached to her, and she warmly reciprocated the feeling. As Mr. +Locker's letter has told us, Mr. Browning was in the habit of reading +poetry to her, and when his sister had to announce his arrival from +Italy or England, she would say: 'Robert is coming to nurse you, and +read to you.' Lady Elgin was by this time almost completely paralyzed. +She had lost the power of speech, and could only acknowledge the little +attentions which were paid to her by some graceful pathetic gesture of +the left hand; but she retained her sensibilities to the last; and Miss +Browning received on one occasion a serious lesson in the risk of ever +assuming that the appearance of unconsciousness guarantees its reality. +Lady Augusta Bruce had asked her, in her mother's presence, how Mrs. +Browning was; and, imagining that Lady Elgin was unable to hear or +understand, she had answered with incautious distinctness, 'I am afraid +she is very ill,' when a little sob from the invalid warned her of her +mistake. Lady Augusta quickly repaired it by rejoining, 'but she is +better than she was, is she not?' Miss Browning of course assented. + +There were other friends, old and new, whom Mr. Browning occasionally +saw, including, I need hardly say, the celebrated Madame Mohl. In the +main, however, he led a quiet life, putting aside many inducements to +leave his home. + +Mrs. Browning was then writing 'Aurora Leigh', and her husband must have +been more than ever impressed by her power of work, as displayed by her +manner of working. To him, as to most creative writers, perfect quiet +was indispensable to literary production. She wrote in pencil, on +scraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room, open to +interruption from chance visitors, or from her little omnipresent son; +simply hiding the paper beside her if anyone came in, and taking it +up again when she was free. And if this process was conceivable in the +large, comparatively silent spaces of their Italian home, and amidst +habits of life which reserved social intercourse for the close of the +working day, it baffles belief when one thinks of it as carried on +in the conditions of a Parisian winter, and the little 'salon' of the +apartment in the Rue du Colisee in which those months were spent. The +poem was completed in the ensuing summer, in Mr. Kenyon's London house, +and dedicated, October 17, in deeply pathetic words to that faithful +friend, whom the writer was never to see again. + +The news of his death, which took place in December 1856, reached Mr. +and Mrs. Browning in Florence, to be followed in the spring by that of +Mrs. Browning's father. Husband and wife had both determined to forego +any pecuniary benefit which might accrue to them from this event; but +they were not called upon to exercise their powers of renunciation. By +Mr. Kenyon's will they were the richer, as is now, I think, generally +known, the one by six thousand, the other by four thousand guineas.* Of +that cousin's long kindness Mrs. Browning could scarcely in after-days +trust herself to speak. It was difficult to her, she said, even to write +his name without tears. + + * Mr. Kenyon had considerable wealth, derived, like Mr. + Barrett's, from West Indian estates. + +I have alluded, perhaps tardily, to Mr. Browning's son, a sociable +little being who must for some time have been playing a prominent part +in his parents' lives. I saw him for the first time in this winter of +1855-6, and remember the grave expression of the little round face, +the outline of which was common, at all events in childhood, to all the +members of his mother's family, and was conspicuous in her, if we may +trust an early portrait which has recently come to light. He wore the +curling hair to which she refers in a later letter, and pretty frocks +and frills, in which she delighted to clothe him. It is on record that, +on one of the journeys of this year, a trunk was temporarily lost which +contained Peni's embroidered trousers, and the MS., whole or in part, of +'Aurora Leigh'; and that Mrs. Browning had scarcely a thought to spare +for her poem, in face of the damage to her little boy's appearance which +the accident involved. + +How he came by his familiar name of Penini--hence Peni, and Pen--neither +signifies in itself, nor has much bearing on his father's family +history; but I cannot refrain from a word of comment on Mr. Hawthorne's +fantastic conjecture, which has been asserted and reasserted in +opposition to Mr. Browning's own statement of the case. According to Mr. +Hawthorne, the name was derived from Apennino, and bestowed on the child +in babyhood, because Apennino was a colossal statue, and he was so very +small. It would be strange indeed that any joke connecting 'Baby' with a +given colossal statue should have found its way into the family without +father, mother, or nurse being aware of it; or that any joke should have +been accepted there which implied that the little boy was not of normal +size. But the fact is still more unanswerable that Apennino could by no +process congenial to the Italian language be converted into Penini. +Its inevitable abbreviation would be Pennino with a distinct separate +sounding of the central n's, or Nino. The accentuation of Penini is also +distinctly German. + +During this winter in Paris, little Wiedemann, as his parents tried to +call him--his full name was Robert Wiedemann Barrett--had developed a +decided turn for blank verse. He would extemporize short poems, singing +them to his mother, who wrote them down as he sang. There is no less +proof of his having possessed a talent for music, though it first +naturally showed itself in the love of a cheerful noise. His father had +once sat down to the piano, for a serious study of some piece, when +the little boy appeared, with the evident intention of joining in the +performance. Mr. Browning rose precipitately, and was about to leave the +room. 'Oh!' exclaimed the hurt mother, 'you are going away, and he +has brought his three drums to accompany you upon.' She herself would +undoubtedly have endured the mixed melody for a little time, though her +husband did not think she seriously wished him to do so. But if he did +not play the piano to the accompaniment of Pen's drums, he played piano +duets with him as soon as the boy was old enough to take part in them; +and devoted himself to his instruction in this, as in other and more +important branches of knowledge. + +Peni had also his dumb companions, as his father had had before him. +Tortoises lived at one end of the famous balcony at Casa Guidi; and +when the family were at the Baths of Lucca, Mr. Browning would stow away +little snakes in his bosom, and produce them for the child's amusement. +As the child grew into a man, the love of animals which he had inherited +became conspicuous in him; and it gave rise to many amusing and some +pathetic little episodes of his artist life. The creatures which he +gathered about him were generally, I think, more highly organized than +those which elicited his father's peculiar tenderness; it was natural +that he should exact more pictorial or more companionable qualities from +them. But father and son concurred in the fondness for snakes, and in a +singular predilection for owls; and they had not been long established +in Warwick Crescent, when a bird of that family was domesticated there. +We shall hear of it in a letter from Mr. Browning. + +Of his son's moral quality as quite a little child his father has told +me pretty and very distinctive stories, but they would be out of place +here.* + + * I am induced, on second thoughts, to subjoin one of these, + for its testimony to the moral atmosphere into which the + child had been born. He was sometimes allowed to play with a + little boy not of his own class--perhaps the son of a + 'contadino'. The child was unobjectionable, or neither + Penini nor his parents would have endured the association; + but the servants once thought themselves justified in + treating him cavalierly, and Pen flew indignant to his + mother, to complain of their behaviour. Mrs. Browning at + once sought little Alessandro, with kind words and a large + piece of cake; but this, in Pen's eyes, only aggravated the + offence; it was a direct reflection on his visitor's + quality. 'He doesn't tome for take,' he burst forth; 'he + tomes because he is my friend.' How often, since I heard + this first, have we repeated the words, 'he doesn't tome for + take,' in half-serious definition of a disinterested person + or act! They became a standing joke. + +Mrs. Browning seems now to have adopted the plan of writing independent +letters to her sister-in-law; and those available for our purpose are +especially interesting. The buoyancy of tone which has habitually +marked her communications, but which failed during the winter in Rome, +reasserts itself in the following extract. Her maternal comments on Peni +and his perfections have hitherto been so carefully excluded, that a +brief allusion to him may be allowed on the present occasion. + + +1857. + +'My dearest Sarianna, . . . Here is Penini's letter, which takes up +so much room that I must be sparing of mine--and, by the way, if you +consider him improved in his writing, give the praise to Robert, who +has been taking most patient pains with him indeed. You will see how +the little curly head is turned with carnival doings. So gay a carnival +never was in our experience, for until last year (when we were absent) +all masks had been prohibited, and now everybody has eaten of the tree +of good and evil till not an apple is left. Peni persecuted me to let +him have a domino--with tears and embraces--he "_almost never_ in all his +life had had a domino," and he would like it so. Not a black domino! +no--he hated black--but a blue domino, trimmed with pink! that was his +taste. The pink trimming I coaxed him out of, but for the rest, I let +him have his way. . . . For my part, the universal madness reached me +sitting by the fire (whence I had not stirred for three months), and you +will open your eyes when I tell you that I went (in domino and masked) +to the great opera-ball. Yes! I did, really. Robert, who had been +invited two or three times to other people's boxes, had proposed to +return their kindness by taking a box himself at the opera this night, +and entertaining two or three friends with galantine and champagne. Just +as he and I were lamenting the impossibility of my going, on that very +morning the wind changed, the air grew soft and mild, and he maintained +that I might and should go. There was no time to get a domino of my +own (Robert himself had a beautiful one made, and I am having it +metamorphosed into a black silk gown for myself!) so I sent out and +hired one, buying the mask. And very much amused I was. I like to see +these characteristic things. (I shall never rest, Sarianna, till I risk +my reputation at the 'bal de l'opera' at Paris). Do you think I was +satisfied with staying in the box? No, indeed. Down I went, and Robert +and I elbowed our way through the crowd to the remotest corner of +the ball below. Somebody smote me on the shoulder and cried "Bella +Mascherina!" and I answered as impudently as one feels under a mask. +At two o'clock in the morning, however, I had to give up and come away +(being overcome by the heavy air) and ingloriously left Robert and +our friends to follow at half-past four. Think of the refinement and +gentleness--yes, I must call it _superiority_ of this people--when no +excess, no quarrelling, no rudeness nor coarseness can be observed in +the course of such wild masked liberty; not a touch of licence anywhere, +and perfect social equality! Our servant Ferdinando side by side in the +same ball-room with the Grand Duke, and no class's delicacy offended +against! For the Grand Duke went down into the ball-room for a short +time. . . .' + + +The summer of 1857 saw the family once more at the Baths of Lucca, and +again in company with Mr. Lytton. He had fallen ill at the house +of their common friend, Miss Blagden, also a visitor there; and Mr. +Browning shared in the nursing, of which she refused to entrust any part +to less friendly hands. He sat up with the invalid for four nights; and +would doubtless have done so for as many more as seemed necessary, but +that Mrs. Browning protested against this trifling with his own health. + +The only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning and +his wife referred to the subject of spiritualism. Mrs. Browning held +doctrines which prepared her to accept any real or imagined phenomena +betokening intercourse with the spirits of the dead; nor could she +be repelled by anything grotesque or trivial in the manner of this +intercourse, because it was no part of her belief that a spirit still +inhabiting the atmosphere of our earth, should exhibit any dignity or +solemnity not belonging to him while he lived upon it. The question must +have been discussed by them on its general grounds at a very early stage +of their intimacy; but it only assumed practical importance when Mr. +Home came to Florence in 1857 or 1858. Mr. Browning found himself +compelled to witness some of the 'manifestations'. He was keenly +alive to their generally prosaic and irreverent character, and to the +appearance of jugglery which was then involved in them. He absolutely +denied the good faith of all the persons concerned. Mrs. Browning as +absolutely believed it; and no compromise between them was attainable, +because, strangely enough, neither of them admitted as possible that +mediums or witnesses should deceive themselves. The personal aspect +which the question thus received brought it into closer and more painful +contact with their daily life. They might agree to differ as to the +abstract merits of spiritualism; but Mr. Browning could not resign +himself to his wife's trustful attitude towards some of the individuals +who at that moment represented it. He may have had no substantial fear +of her doing anything that could place her in their power, though a +vague dread of this seems to have haunted him; but he chafed against the +public association of her name with theirs. Both his love for and his +pride in her resented it. + +He had subsided into a more judicial frame of mind when he wrote 'Sludge +the Medium', in which he says everything which can excuse the liar and, +what is still more remarkable, modify the lie. So far back as the autumn +of 1860 I heard him discuss the trickery which he believed himself to +have witnessed, as dispassionately as any other non-credulous person +might have done so. The experience must even before that have passed +out of the foreground of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, +subject, for many years, to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which would +sweep over him whenever the question of 'spirits' or 'spiritualism' was +revived; and we can only understand this in connection with the peculiar +circumstances of the case. With all his faith in the future, with all +his constancy to the past, the memory of pain was stronger in him than +any other. A single discordant note in the harmony of that married love, +though merged in its actual existence, would send intolerable vibrations +through his remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in this +instance, that of simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. +Browning's refusal to admit that disagreement was possible. She never +believed in her husband's disbelief; and he had been not unreasonably +annoyed by her always assuming it to be feigned. But his doubt of +spiritualistic sincerity was not feigned. She cannot have thought, +and scarcely can have meant to say so. She may have meant to say, 'You +believe that these are tricks, but you know that there is something real +behind them;' and so far, if no farther, she may have been in the +right. Mr. Browning never denied the abstract possibility of spiritual +communication with either living or dead; he only denied that such +communication had ever been proved, or that any useful end could +be subserved by it. The tremendous potentialities of hypnotism and +thought-reading, now passing into the region of science, were not then +so remote but that an imagination like his must have foreshadowed them. +The natural basis of the seemingly supernatural had not yet entered into +discussion. He may, from the first, have suspected the existence of some +mysterious force, dangerous because not understood, and for this reason +doubly liable to fall into dangerous hands. And if this was so, he +would necessarily regard the whole system of manifestations with +an apprehensive hostility, which was not entire negation, but which +rebelled against any effort on the part of others, above all of those +he loved, to interpret it into assent. The pain and anger which could be +aroused in him by an indication on the part of a valued friend of even +an impartial interest in the subject points especially to the latter +conclusion. + +He often gave an instance of the tricks played in the name of +spiritualism on credulous persons, which may amuse those who have not +yet heard it. I give the story as it survives in the fresher memory of +Mr. Val Prinsep, who also received it from Mr. Browning. + + +'At Florence lived a curious old savant who in his day was well known +to all who cared for art or history. I fear now few live who recollect +Kirkup. He was quite a mine of information on all kinds of forgotten +lore. It was he who discovered Giotto's portrait of Dante in the +Bargello. Speaking of some friend, he said, "He is a most ignorant +fellow! Why, he does not know how to cast a horoscope!" Of him Browning +told me the following story. Kirkup was much taken up with spiritualism, +in which he firmly believed. One day Browning called on him to borrow a +book. He rang loudly at the storey, for he knew Kirkup, like Landor, +was quite deaf. To his astonishment the door opened at once and Kirkup +appeared. + +'"Come in," he cried; "the spirits told me there was some one at the +door. Ah! I know you do not believe! Come and see. Mariana is in a +trance!" + +'Browning entered. In the middle room, full of all kinds of curious +objects of "vertu", stood a handsome peasant girl, with her eyes fixed +as though she were in a trance. + +'"You see, Browning," said Kirkup, "she is quite insensible, and has no +will of her own. Mariana, hold up your arm." + +'The woman slowly did as she was bid. + +'"She cannot take it down till I tell her," cried Kirkup. + +'"Very curious," observed Browning. "Meanwhile I have come to ask you to +lend me a book." + +'Kirkup, as soon as he was made to hear what book was wanted, said he +should be delighted. + +'"Wait a bit. It is in the next room." + +'The old man shuffled out at the door. No sooner had he disappeared than +the woman turned to Browning, winked, and putting down her arm leaned it +on his shoulder. When Kirkup returned she resumed her position and rigid +look. + +'"Here is the book," said Kirkup. "Isn't it wonderful?" he added, +pointing to the woman. + +'"Wonderful," agreed Browning as he left the room. + +'The woman and her family made a good thing of poor Kirkup's +spiritualism.' + + +Something much more remarkable in reference to this subject happened to +the poet himself during his residence in Florence. It is related in a +letter to the 'Spectator', dated January 30, 1869, and signed J. S. K. + + +'Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years +since, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at +Florence, was brought to his house without previous introduction, by +an intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric and +clairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed +scepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of +his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him +then and there, which he could hand to him, and which was in any way +a relic or memento. This Mr. Browning thought was perhaps because he +habitually wore no sort of trinket or ornament, not even a watchguard, +and might therefore turn out to be a safe challenge. But it so happened +that, by a curious accident, he was then wearing under his coat-sleeves +some gold wrist-studs which he had quite recently taken into wear, in +the absence (by mistake of a sempstress) of his ordinary wrist-buttons. +He had never before worn them in Florence or elsewhere, and had found +them in some old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of +these studs he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand +a while, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning's face, and then he said, +as if much impressed, "C'equalche cosa che mi grida nell' orecchio +'Uccisione! uccisione!'" ("There is something here which cries out in my +ear, 'Murder! murder!'") + +'"And truly," says Mr. Browning, "those very studs were taken from +the dead body of a great uncle of mine who was violently killed on his +estate in St. Kitt's, nearly eighty years ago. . . . The occurrence of +my great uncle's murder was known only to myself of all men in Florence, +as certainly was also my possession of the studs."' + + +A letter from the poet, of July 21, 1883, affirms that the account is +correct in every particular, adding, 'My own explanation of the matter +has been that the shrewd Italian felt his way by the involuntary help +of my own eyes and face.' The story has been reprinted in the Reports of +the Psychical Society. + +A pleasant piece of news came to brighten the January of 1858. Mr. Fox +was returned for Oldham, and at once wrote to announce the fact. He +was answered in a joint letter from Mr. and Mrs. Browning, interesting +throughout, but of which only the second part is quite suited for +present insertion. + +Mrs. Browning, who writes first and at most length, ends by saying +she must leave a space for Robert, that Mr. Fox may be compensated for +reading all she has had to say. The husband continues as follows: + + +. . . 'A space for Robert' who has taken a breathing space--hardly more +than enough--to recover from his delight; he won't say surprise, at your +letter, dear Mr. Fox. But it is all right and, like you, I wish from my +heart we could get close together again, as in those old days, and what +times we would have here in Italy! The realization of the children's +prayer of angels at the corner of your bed (i.e. sofa), one to read +and one (my wife) to write,* and both to guard you through the night of +lodging-keeper's extortions, abominable charges for firing, and so on. +(Observe, to call oneself 'an angel' in this land is rather humble, +where they are apt to be painted as plumed cutthroats or celestial +police--you say of Gabriel at his best and blithesomest, 'Shouldn't +admire meeting _him_ in a narrow lane!') + + * Mr. Fox much liked to be read to, and was in the habit + of writing his articles by dictation. + +I say this foolishly just because I can't trust myself to be earnest +about it. I would, you know, I would, always would, choose you out of +the whole English world to judge and correct what I write myself; my +wife shall read this and let it stand if I have told her so these twelve +years--and certainly I have not grown intellectually an inch over the +good and kind hand you extended over my head how many years ago! Now it +goes over my wife's too. + +How was it Tottie never came here as she promised? Is it to be some +other time? Do think of Florence, if ever you feel chilly, and hear +quantities about the Princess Royal's marriage, and want a change. I +hate the thought of leaving Italy for one day more than I can help--and +satisfy my English predilections by newspapers and a book or two. +One gets nothing of that kind here, but the stuff out of which books +grow,--it lies about one's feet indeed. Yet for me, there would be one +book better than any now to be got here or elsewhere, and all out of a +great English head and heart,--those 'Memoirs' you engaged to give us. +Will you give us them? + +Goodbye now--if ever the whim strikes you to 'make beggars happy' +remember us. + +Love to Tottie, and love and gratitude to you, dear Mr. Fox, From yours +ever affectionately, Robert Browning. + + +In the summer of this year, the poet with his wife and child joined his +father and sister at Havre. It was the last time they were all to be +together. + + + + +Chapter 13 + +1858-1861 + +Mrs. Browning's Illness--Siena--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Leighton +--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Walter Savage Landor--Winter +in Rome--Mr. Val Prinsep--Friends in Rome: Mr. and Mrs. +Cartwright--Multiplying Social Relations--Massimo d'Azeglio--Siena +again--Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister--Mr. Browning's +Occupations--Madame du Quaire--Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death. + + + +I cannot quite ascertain, though it might seem easy to do so, whether +Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in Florence again till the summer of +1859, or whether the intervening months were divided between Florence +and Rome; but some words in their letters favour the latter supposition. +We hear of them in September from Mr. Val Prinsep, in Siena or its +neighbourhood; with Mr. and Mrs. Story in an adjacent villa, and Walter +Savage Landor in a 'cottage' close by. How Mr. Landor found himself +of the party belongs to a little chapter in Mr. Browning's history for +which I quote Mr. Colvin's words.* He was then living at Fiesole with +his family, very unhappily, as we all know; and Mr. Colvin relates +how he had thrice left his villa there, determined to live in Florence +alone; and each time been brought back to the nominal home where so +little kindness awaited him. + + * 'Life of Landor', p. 209. + + +'. . . The fourth time he presented himself in the house of Mr. Browning +with only a few pauls in his pocket, declaring that nothing should ever +induce him to return. + +'Mr. Browning, an interview with the family at the villa having +satisfied him that reconciliation or return was indeed past question, +put himself at once in communication with Mr. Forster and with Landor's +brothers in England. The latter instantly undertook to supply the needs +of their eldest brother during the remainder of his life. Thenceforth an +income sufficient for his frugal wants was forwarded regularly for his +use through the friend who had thus come forward at his need. To Mr. +Browning's respectful and judicious guidance Landor showed himself +docile from the first. Removed from the inflictions, real and imaginary, +of his life at Fiesole, he became another man, and at times still seemed +to those about him like the old Landor at his best. It was in July, +1859, that the new arrangements for his life were made. The remainder +of that summer he spent at Siena, first as the guest of Mr. Story, the +American sculptor and poet, next in a cottage rented for him by Mr. +Browning near his own. In the autumn of the same year Landor removed to +a set of apartments in the Via Nunziatina in Florence, close to the +Casa Guidi, in a house kept by a former servant of Mrs. Browning's, an +Englishwoman married to an Italian.* Here he continued to live during +the five years that yet remained to him.' + + * Wilson, Mrs. Browning's devoted maid, and another most + faithful servant + of hers and her husband's, Ferdinando Romagnoli. + +Mr. Landor's presence is also referred to, with the more important +circumstance of a recent illness of Mrs. Browning's, in two +characteristic and interesting letters of this period, one written +by Mr. Browning to Frederic Leighton, the other by his wife to her +sister-in-law. Mr.-- now Sir F.-- Leighton had been studying art during +the previous winter in Italy. + + +Kingdom of Piedmont, Siena: Oct. 9, '59. + +'My dear Leighton--I hope--and think--you know what delight it gave +me to hear from you two months ago. I was in great trouble at the time +about my wife who was seriously ill. As soon as she could bear removal +we brought her to a villa here. She slowly recovered and is at last _well_ +--I believe--but weak still and requiring more attention than usual. We +shall be obliged to return to Rome for the winter--not choosing to risk +losing what we have regained with some difficulty. Now you know why I +did not write at once--and may imagine why, having waited so long, I put +off telling you for a week or two till I could say certainly what we do +with ourselves. If any amount of endeavour could induce you to join us +there--Cartwright, Russell, the Vatican and all--and if such a step were +not inconsistent with your true interests--you should have it: but I +know very well that you love Italy too much not to have had weighty +reasons for renouncing her at present--and I want your own good and +not my own contentment in the matter. Wherever you are, be sure I shall +follow your proceedings with deep and true interest. I heard of your +successes--and am now anxious to know how you get on with the great +picture, the 'Ex voto'--if it does not prove full of beauty and power, +two of us will be shamed, that's all! But _I_ don't fear, mind! Do +keep me informed of your progress, from time to time--a few lines will +serve--and then I shall slip some day into your studio, and buffet the +piano, without having grown a stranger. Another thing--do take proper +care of your health, and exercise yourself; give those vile indigestions +no chance against you; keep up your spirits, and be as distinguished and +happy as God meant you should. Can I do anything for you at Rome--not to +say, Florence? We go thither (i.e. to Florence) to-morrow, stay there a +month, probably, and then take the Siena road again.' + + +The next paragraph refers to some orders for photographs, and is not +specially interesting. + + +Cartwright arrived here a fortnight ago--very pleasant it was to see +him: he left for Florence, stayed a day or two and returned to Mrs. +Cartwright (who remained at the Inn) and they all departed prosperously +yesterday for Rome. Odo Russell spent two days here on his way +thither--we liked him much. Prinsep and Jones--do you know them?--are in +the town. The Storys have passed the summer in the villa opposite,--and +no less a lion than dear old Landor is in a house a few steps off. I +take care of him--his amiable family having clawed him a little +too sharply: so strangely do things come about! I mean his Fiesole +'family'--a trifle of wife, sons and daughter--not his English +relatives, who are generous and good in every way. + +Take any opportunity of telling dear Mrs. Sartoris (however +unnecessarily) that I and my wife remember her with the old feeling--I +trust she is well and happy to heart's content. Pen is quite well and +rejoicing just now in a Sardinian pony on which he gallops like Puck on +a dragon-fly's back. My wife's kind regard and best wishes go with those +of, Dear Leighton, yours affectionately ever, R. Browning. + + + +October 1859. + +Mrs. to Miss Browning. + +'. . . After all, it is not a cruel punishment to have to go to Rome +again this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and we +did wish to keep quiet this winter,--the taste for constant wanderings +having passed away as much for me as for Robert. We begin to see that +by no possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end--and +then we don't work so well, don't live to as much use either for +ourselves or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend to live +at Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, what +with going away for the summer and going away for the winter. It's +too true. It's the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there is +impossible for us, almost just as to live out of Italy at all, is +impossible for us. It isn't caprice on our part. Siena pleases us very +much--the silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, and the +country is very pretty--though no more than pretty--nothing marked or +romantic--no mountains, except so far off as to be like a cloud only +on clear days--and no water. Pretty dimpled ground, covered with low +vineyards, purple hills, not high, with the sunsets clothing them. . . . +We shall not leave Florence till November--Robert must see Mr. Landor +(his adopted son, Sarianna) settled in his new apartments with Wilson +for a duenna. It's an excellent plan for him and not a bad one for +Wilson. . . . Forgive me if Robert has told you this already. Dear +darling Robert amuses me by talking of his "gentleness and sweetness". +A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, and very +affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but of self-restraint, he +has not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. Wilson will run +many risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. What do you say +to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like what's on it? +And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now have been already +accused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion (though there +was talk of the probability of Mr. Landor's "throat being cut in his +sleep"--) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him--and +the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, to beguile +the time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. He +laughs carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days he will have +to write an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me.' + + +Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome: + + +'. . . We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment +before it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look-out into a little +garden, quiet and cheerful, and he doesn't mind a situation rather out +of the way. He pays four pounds ten (English) the month. Wilson has +thirty pounds a year for taking care of him--which sounds a good deal, +but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionate +impulses--but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. Nothing +coheres in him--either in his opinions, or, I fear, his affections. It +isn't age--he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. Still, +his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, and +I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert always +said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary. +At present Landor is very fond of him--but I am quite prepared for his +turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been so +devoted for years and years. Only one isn't kind for what one gets by +it, or there wouldn't be much kindness in this world. . . .' + + +Mr. Browning always declared that his wife could impute evil to no one, +that she was a living denial of that doctrine of original sin to which +her Christianity pledged her; and the great breadth and perfect charity +of her views habitually justified the assertion; but she evidently +possessed a keen insight into character, which made her complete +suspension of judgment on the subject of Spiritualism very difficult to +understand. + +The spiritualistic coterie had found a satisfactory way of explaining +Mr. Browning's antagonistic attitude towards it. He was jealous, it was +said, because the Spirits on one occasion had dropped a crown on to his +wife's head and none on to his own. The first instalment of his +long answer to this grotesque accusation appears in a letter of Mrs. +Browning's, probably written in the course of the winter of 1859-60. + + +'. . . My brother George sent me a number of the "National Magazine" +with my face in it, after Marshall Wood's medallion. My comfort is that +my greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not go +far with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have its +due weight in arresting the sale of "Aurora Leigh" from henceforth. You +never saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman with the +neck of a vicious bull. . . . Still, I am surprised, I own, at the +amount of success, and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about +it, far more than if it all related to a book of his own. The form of +the story, and also, something in the philosophy, seem to have caught +the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels +rather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . Give +Peni's and my love to the dearest 'nonno' (grandfather) whose sublime +unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to +what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched +feeling. (When _he_ is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or +humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long +life's ungoverned will.) May God bless him!--. . . Robert has made his +third bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are +finished--it's only matter of education. When the power of execution is +achieved, he will try at something original. Then reading hurts him; as +long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time--he +can do it now better than at the beginning. The consequence of which +is that an active occupation is salvation to him. . . . Nobody exactly +understands him except me, who am in the inside of him and hear him +breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloud +with me and can't stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems done this +winter very much, and here was a bright room with three windows +consecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and did +nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours +together--there has been little poetry done since last winter, when +he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling +combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and +the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been +happy. So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture--I +couldn't in fact at all. He has material for a volume, and will work at +it this summer, he says. + +'His power is much in advance of "Strafford", which is his poorest work +of art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of the +pen. + +'At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, and +for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public--no other word. +He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which I +acknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I +wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady +of rank, an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, the other +day, the American minister, whether "Robert was not an American." The +minister answered--"is it possible that _you_ ask me this? Why, there is +not so poor a village in the United States, where they would not tell +you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were sorry +he was not an American." Very pretty of the American minister, was it +not?--and literally true, besides. . . . Ah, dear Sarianna--I don't +complain for myself of an unappreciating public. I _have no reason_. But, +just for _that_ reason, I complain more about Robert--only he does not +hear me complain--to _you_ I may say, that the blindness, deafness and +stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Of course Milsand +had heard his name--well the contrary would have been strange. Robert +_is_. All England can't prevent his existence, I suppose. But nobody +there, except a small knot of pre-Raffaellite men, pretend to do him +justice. Mr. Forster has done the best,--in the press. As a sort of +lion, Robert has his range in society--and--for the rest, you should +see Chapman's returns!--While, in America he is a power, a writer, a +poet--he is read--he lives in the hearts of the people. + +'"Browning readings" here in Boston--"Browning evenings" there. For the +rest, the English hunt lions, too, Sarianna, but their lions are chiefly +chosen among lords and railway kings. . . .' + + +We cannot be surprised at Mrs. Browning's desire for a more sustained +literary activity on her husband's part. We learn from his own +subsequent correspondence that he too regarded the persevering exercise +of his poetic faculty as almost a religious obligation. But it becomes +the more apparent that the restlessness under which he was now labouring +was its own excuse; and that its causes can have been no mystery even +to those 'outside' him. The life and climate of Italy were beginning +to undermine his strength. We owe it perhaps to the great and sorrowful +change, which was then drawing near, that the full power of work +returned to him. + +During the winter of 1859-60, Mr. Val Prinsep was in Rome. He had gone +to Siena with Mr. Burne Jones, bearing an introduction from Rossetti to +Mr. Browning and his wife; and the acquaintance with them was renewed +in the ensuing months. Mr. Prinsep had acquired much knowledge of the +popular, hence picturesque aspects of Roman life, through a French +artist long resident in the city; and by the help of the two young men +Mr. Browning was also introduced to them. The assertion that during his +married life he never dined away from home must be so far modified, that +he sometimes joined Mr. Prinsep and his friend in a Bohemian meal, at an +inn near the Porta Pinciana which they much frequented; and he gained in +this manner some distinctive experiences which he liked long afterwards +to recall. I am again indebted to Mr. Prinsep for a description of some +of these. + + +'The first time he honoured us was on an evening when the poet of +the quarter of the "Monte" had announced his intention of coming to +challenge a rival poet to a poetical contest. Such contests are, or +were, common in Rome. In old times the Monte and the Trastevere, the +two great quarters of the eternal city, held their meetings on the Ponte +Rotto. The contests were not confined to the effusions of the poetical +muse. Sometimes it was a strife between two lute-players, sometimes +guitarists would engage, and sometimes mere wrestlers. The rivalry was +so keen that the adverse parties finished up with a general fight. So +the Papal Government had forbidden the meetings on the old bridge. +But still each quarter had its pet champions, who were wont to meet in +private before an appreciative, but less excitable audience, than in +olden times. + +'Gigi (the host) had furnished a first-rate dinner, and his usual tap +of excellent wine. ('Vino del Popolo' he called it.) The 'Osteria' had +filled; the combatants were placed opposite each other on either side +of a small table on which stood two 'mezzi'--long glass bottles holding +about a quart apiece. For a moment the two poets eyed each other like +two cocks seeking an opportunity to engage. Then through the crowd a +stalwart carpenter, a constant attendant of Gigi's, elbowed his way. +He leaned over the table with a hand on each shoulder, and in a neatly +turned couplet he then addressed the rival bards. + +'"You two," he said, "for the honour of Rome, must do your best, for +there is now listening to you a great Poet from England." + +'Having said this, he bowed to Browning, and swaggered back to his place +in the crowd, amid the applause of the on-lookers. + +'It is not necessary to recount how the two Improvisatori poetized, even +if I remembered, which I do not. + +'On another occasion, when Browning and Story were dining with us, we +had a little orchestra (mandolins, two guitars, and a lute,) to play to +us. The music consisted chiefly of well-known popular airs. While they +were playing with great fervour the Hymn to Garibaldi--an air strictly +forbidden by the Papal Government, three blows at the door resounded +through the 'Osteria'. The music stopped in a moment. I saw Gigi was +very pale as he walked down the room. There was a short parley at the +door. It opened, and a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes marched solemnly +up to the counter from which drink was supplied. There was a dead +silence while Gigi supplied them with large measures of wine, which the +gendarmes leisurely imbibed. Then as solemnly they marched out again, +with their heads well in the air, looking neither to the right nor the +left. Most discreet if not incorruptible guardians of the peace! When +the door was shut the music began again; but Gigi was so earnest in +his protestations, that my friend Browning suggested we should get into +carriages and drive to see the Coliseum by moonlight. And so we sallied +forth, to the great relief of poor Gigi, to whom it meant, if reported, +several months of imprisonment, and complete ruin. + +'In after-years Browning frequently recounted with delight this night +march. + +'"We drove down the Corso in two carriages," he would say. "In one were +our musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people all asked, 'who +are these who make all this parade?' At last some one said, 'Without +doubt these are the fellows who won the lottery,' and everybody cried, +'Of course these are the lucky men who have won.'"' + + +The two persons whom Mr. Browning saw most, and most intimately, during +this and the ensuing winter, were probably Mr. and Mrs. Story. Allusion +has already been made to the opening of the acquaintance at the Baths +of Lucca in 1853, to its continuance in Rome in '53 and '54, and to the +artistic pursuits which then brought the two men into close and frequent +contact with each other. These friendly relations were cemented by their +children, who were of about the same age; and after Mrs. Browning's +death, Miss Browning took her place in the pleasant intercourse which +renewed itself whenever their respective visits to Italy and to England +again brought the two families together. A no less lasting and truly +affectionate intimacy was now also growing up with Mr. Cartwright and +his wife--the Cartwrights (of Aynhoe) of whom mention was made in the +Siena letter to F. Leighton; and this too was subsequently to include +their daughter, now Mrs. Guy Le Strange, and Mr. Browning's sister. I +cannot quite ascertain when the poet first knew Mr. Odo Russell, and his +mother, Lady William Russell, who was also during this, or at all +events the following winter, in Rome; and whom afterwards in London +he regularly visited until her death; but the acquaintance was already +entering on the stage in which it would spread as a matter of course +through every branch of the family. His first country visit, when he had +returned to England, was paid with his son to Woburn Abbey. + +We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficulties +of Mr. Browning's biography: that of giving a sufficient idea of the +growing extent and growing variety of his social relations. It is +evident from the fragments of his wife's correspondence that during, as +well as after, his married life, he always and everywhere knew everyone +whom it could interest him to know. These acquaintances constantly +ripened into friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They were +necessarily often marked by interesting circumstances or distinctive +character. To follow them one by one, would add not chapters, but +volumes, to our history. The time has not yet come at which this could +even be undertaken; and any attempt at systematic selection would create +a false impression of the whole. I must therefore be still content to +touch upon such passages of Mr. Browning's social experience as lie in +the course of a comparatively brief record; leaving all such as are not +directly included in it to speak indirectly for themselves. + +Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859: + + +'Massimo d'Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noble +head of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personal +distinction you will guess at,* though I don't pretend to have been +insensible to that.' + + * An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company + with the young Prince of Wales. + +Dr.--afterwards Cardinal--Manning was also among the distinguished or +interesting persons whom they knew in Rome. + +Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or +1860, when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once more +in contemplation. + + +Casa Guidi. + +'My dearest Sarianna,--I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and +see our dear Florence--the Queen of Italy, after all . . . A comfort +is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was +known to look--and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his beard . . . +which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine +touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole +physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed--let me tell you how. +He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival +in Rome, from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of +suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard . . . whiskers and all!! +I _cried_ when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into +hysterics and still been reasonable--for no human being was ever so +disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered heart +and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn't +let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his +looking-glass) he yielded the point,--and the beard grew--but it grew +white--which was the just punishment of the gods--our sins leave their +traces. + +'Well, poor darling Robert won't shock you after all--you can't choose +but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was +not changed for the intermediate years. . . .' + + +The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, and from +thence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxiety +concerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook,* then attacked by a +fatal disease. + + * The name was afterwards changed to Altham. + + +'. . . There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my +precious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it +is--be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful +temperament, and I never could go on systematically making the worst of +any case. I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectation +of a letter, which is hard. I fight with it for Robert's sake, but all +the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. She is +confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely. . . . In fact, +I am living from day to day, on the merest crumbs of hope--on the daily +bread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me a good deal, and +interfered with the advantages of the summer, but that's the least. Poor +Robert's scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out. +. . .' + + +This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just +the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected--the second +postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears +which might have found a moment's forgetfulness in the longer absence of +news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion +the suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife's +desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No +answer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and +that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up +his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been +stopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken +to forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal +sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to +political suspicion. + +Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning always +believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his +wife's life, though it is also possible that her already lowered +vitality increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her own +casual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested +progress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been +a mistake, that active signs of consumption were apparent in her even +before the illness of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginning +of the end. She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a +recluse, during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in +Rome. + +She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning in +April, in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy. + + +'. . . In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive +than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago. . . . I believe people in +general would think the same exactly. As to the modelling--well, I told +you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. But it +does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great +deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and +the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, +Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a +little with him on this point, for I don't think him right; that is +to say, it would not be right for me . . . But Robert waits for an +inclination, works by fits and starts; he can't do otherwise he says, +and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble. I +yearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present. . . . You +will think Robert looking very well when you see him; indeed, you may +judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used to +forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, but all artists +were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip does not +harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, and the beard is +pointed. . . . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful, +_I_ think, but then I think him all beautiful, and always. . . .' + + +Mr. Browning's old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December. +She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her +for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English +colony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with +her brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in +her sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, +and all that 'conquers death'. He little knew how soon he would need the +same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife's +poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said, +as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers, +he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some +years afterwards to another friend: 'You are wrong--quite wrong--she has +genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort +of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something--he wants +to make you see it as he sees it--shows you one point of view, carries +you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to +understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you +off a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creative +power is hers, not mine.' + + * Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New + Castle. + +Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after their +return to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection to +which she was subject; and a new doctor who was called in discovered +grave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed to +be existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively, indeed +actually, slight; and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning, +dated June 7, confirms what her family and friends have since asserted, +that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow. + + +'. . . We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or +hand to name 'Cavour'. That great soul which meditated and made Italy +has gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved +him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely +comprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a +man!' + + +Her death was signalized by the appearance--this time, I am told, +unexpected--of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earth +as to come into contact with it. + + + + +Chapter 14 + +1861-1863 + +Miss Blagden--Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. +Leighton--His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies--Establishment +in London--Plan of Life--Letter to Madame du Quaire--Miss Arabel +Barrett--Biarritz--Letters to Miss Blagden--Conception of 'The Ring and +the Book'--Biographical Indiscretion--New Edition of his Works--Mr. and +Mrs. Procter. + + + +The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning +in this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden--Isa Blagden, as she +was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her could +hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet's life; but +the friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning +brings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. She was +for many years a centre of English society in Florence; for her genial, +hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes (she wrote one or two +novels, I believe not without merit), secured her the acquaintance of +many interesting persons, some of whom occasionally made her house their +home; and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo live +pleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation who were +permitted to share in them. + +She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, and induced his +father to spend his nights under her roof, while the last painful duties +detained him in Florence. He at least gave her cause to deny, what has +been so often affirmed, that great griefs are necessarily silent. She +always spoke of this period as her 'apocalyptic month', so deeply poetic +were the ravings which alternated with the simple human cry of the +desolate heart: 'I want her, I want her!' But the ear which received +these utterances has long been closed in death. The only written +outbursts of Mr. Browning's frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, to +his sister, and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent loss +most naturally invoked them, and who has since thought best, so far as +rested with her, to destroy the letters in which they were contained. It +is enough to know by simple statement that he then suffered as he did. +Life conquers Death for most of us; whether or not 'nature, art, +and beauty' assist in the conquest. It was bound to conquer in Mr. +Browning's case: first through his many-sided vitality; and secondly, +through the special motive for living and striving which remained to +him in his son. This note is struck in two letters which are given me to +publish, written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning's death; and we +see also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow, +and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace and +painlessness of his wife's last moments could afford to him. + + +Florence: July 19, '61. + +Dear Leighton,--It is like your old kindness to write to me and to say +what you do--I know you feel for me. I can't write about it--but there +were many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day--there +seemed no pain, and (what she would have felt most) the knowledge of +separation from us was spared her. I find these things a comfort indeed. + +I shall go away from Italy for many a year--to Paris, then London for a +day or two just to talk with her sister--but if I can see you it will be +a great satisfaction. Don't fancy I am 'prostrated', I have enough to do +for the boy and myself in carrying out her wishes. He is better than one +would have thought, and behaves dearly to me. Everybody has been very +kind. + +Tell dear Mrs. Sartoris that I know her heart and thank her with all +mine. After my day or two at London I shall go to some quiet place in +France to get right again and then stay some time at Paris in order to +find out leisurely what it will be best to do for Peni--but eventually I +shall go to England, I suppose. I don't mean to live with anybody, even +my own family, but to occupy myself thoroughly, seeing dear friends, +however, like you. God bless you. Yours ever affectionately, Robert +Browning. + + +The second is addressed to Miss Haworth. + + +Florence: July 20, 1861. + +My dear Friend,--I well know you feel as you say, for her once and for +me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you +something perhaps--and one day I shall see you and be able to tell you +myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very +little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks +of cold and cough she was subject to--had no presentiment of the result +whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was +about to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was 'better', +'quite comfortable--if I would but come to bed,' to within a few minutes +of the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the +beginning of the week's illness--but when I reasoned about it, there +was no justifying fear--she said on the last evening 'it is merely the +old attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago--there is no +doubt I shall soon recover,' and we talked over plans for the summer, +and next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed--so little +reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept +heavily, and brokenly--that was the bad sign--but then she would sit +up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. At +four o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid and +sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, 'Well, +you _are_ determined to make an exaggerated case of it!' Then came what +my heart will keep till I see her again and longer--the most perfect +expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always +smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's--and in a few minutes +she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustain +me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was no +lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took +her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy +bed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by her +earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have +been aware of our parting's approach--but she was quite conscious, had +words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in +the next room. Her last word was when I asked 'How do you feel?' +--'Beautiful.' You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to +attend to _at once_--her child to care for, educate, establish properly; +and my own life to fulfil as properly,--all just as she would require +were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years--go to London +for a few days' talk with Arabel--then go to my father and begin to try +leisurely what will be the best for Peni--but no more 'housekeeping' +for me, even with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope--but my root is +taken and remains. + +I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always be +grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did. + +She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if one +consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. +I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well--very +dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can't know his +loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine--he will want what he +never had--that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom, +and genius and piety--I _have_ had everything and shall not forget. + +God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa +goes with me--dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us +were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day +or two before the end--she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace +for you,--Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151, +rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, Robert +Browning. + + +The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought +less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, I +believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men. +His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. At +about the end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied by +Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself must +soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on the +subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,* in a manner which shows +her to have been on the spot. + + * Required for the subsequent placing of the monument + designed by F. Leighton. + + +Sept. '61. + +'. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful +preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded +with,--will you do--all you can--suggest every regard to decency and +proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man +of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure--I rely on you, +dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the +time shall come--a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, +or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left +the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, +carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won't +think any more of it--now--at least. . . .' + + +The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of +the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects +itself with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, which +was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank, as his +wife had done, from the 'earth side' of the portentous change; but truth +compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part in his +attitude towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed, +held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been. He had no +sympathy for the still human tenderness with which so many of us regard +the mortal remains of those they have loved, or with the solemn or +friendly interest in which that tenderness so often reflects itself in +more neutral minds. He would claim all respect for the corpse, but he +would turn away from it. Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in +a letter to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, in +reference to his wife's monument, with which Mr. Barrett had professed +himself pleased. His tone is characterized by an almost religious +reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines. He nevertheless +writes: + + +'I hope to see it one day--and, although I have no kind of concern as to +where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown, yet, if my fortune be +such, and my survivors be not unduly troubled, I should like them to lie +in the place I have retained there. It is no matter, however.' + + +The letter is dated October 19, 1866. He never saw Florence again. + +Mr. Browning spent two months with his father and sister at St.-Enogat, +near Dinard, from which place the letter to Miss Blagden was written; +and then proceeded to London, where his wife's sister, Miss Arabel +Barrett, was living. He had declared in his first grief that he would +never keep house again, and he began his solitary life in lodgings +which at his request she had engaged for him; but the discomfort of this +arrangement soon wearied him of it; and before many months had passed, +he had sent to Florence for his furniture, and settled himself in the +house in Warwick Crescent, which possessed, besides other advantages, +that of being close to Delamere Terrace, where Miss Barrett had taken up +her abode. + +This first period of Mr. Browning's widowed life was one of unutterable +dreariness, in which the smallest and yet most unconquerable element was +the prosaic ugliness of everything which surrounded him. It was fifteen +years since he had spent a winter in England; he had never spent one in +London. There had been nothing to break for him the transition from the +stately beauty of Florence to the impressions and associations of the +Harrow and Edgware Roads, and of Paddington Green. He might have +escaped this neighbourhood by way of Westbourne Terrace; but his +walks constantly led him in an easterly direction; and whether in an +unconscious hugging of his chains, or, as was more probable, from the +desire to save time, he would drag his aching heart and reluctant body +through the sordidness or the squalor of this short cut, rather than +seek the pleasanter thoroughfares which were open to him. Even the +prettiness of Warwick Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphere +of low or ugly life which encompassed it on almost every side. His +haunting dream was one day to have done with it all; to have fulfilled +his mission with his son, educated him, launched him in a suitable +career, and to go back to sunshine and beauty again. He learned by +degrees to regard London as a home; as the only fitting centre for the +varied energies which were reviving in him; to feel pride and pleasure +in its increasingly picturesque character. He even learned to appreciate +the outlook from his house--that 'second from the bridge' of which so +curious a presentment had entered into one of the poems of the 'Men and +Women'*--in spite of the refuse of humanity which would sometimes yell +at the street corner, or fling stones at his plate-glass. But all this +had to come; and it is only fair to admit that twenty-nine years ago the +beauties of which I have spoken were in great measure to come also. He +could not then in any mood have exclaimed, as he did to a friend two or +three years ago: 'Shall we not have a pretty London if things go on in +this way?' They were driving on the Kensington side of Hyde Park. + + * 'How it strikes a Contemporary'. + +The paternal duty, which, so much against his inclination, had +established Mr. Browning in England, would in every case have lain very +near to his conscience and to his heart; but it especially urged itself +upon them through the absence of any injunction concerning it on his +wife's part. No farewell words of hers had commended their child to his +father's love and care; and though he may, for the moment, have imputed +this fact to unconsciousness of her approaching death, his deeper +insight soon construed the silence into an expression of trust, more +binding upon him than the most earnest exacted promise could have been. +The growing boy's education occupied a considerable part of his time and +thoughts, for he had determined not to send him to school, but, as far +as possible, himself prepare him for the University. He must also, in +some degree, have supervised his recreations. He had therefore, for the +present, little leisure for social distractions, and probably at first +very little inclination for them. His plan of life and duty, and the +sense of responsibility attendant on it, had been communicated to Madame +du Quaire in a letter written also from St.-Enogat. + + +M. Chauvin, St.-Enogat pres Dinard, Ile et Vilaine: Aug. 17, '61. + +Dear Madame du Quaire,--I got your note on Sunday afternoon, but found +myself unable to call on you as I had been intending to do. Next morning +I left for this place (near St.-Malo, but I give what they say is the +proper address). I want first to beg you to forgive my withholding so +long your little oval mirror--it is safe in Paris, and I am vexed at +having stupidly forgotten to bring it when I tried to see you. I shall +stay here till the autumn sets in, then return to Paris for a few +days--the first of which will be the best, if I can see you in the +course of it--afterward, I settle in London. + +When I meant to pass the winter in Paris, I hoped, the first thing +almost, to be near you--it now seems to me, however, that the best +course for the Boy is to begin a good English education at once. I shall +take quiet lodgings (somewhere near Kensington Gardens, I rather +think) and get a Tutor. I want, if I can (according to my present +very imperfect knowledge) to get the poor little fellow fit for the +University without passing thro' a Public School. I, myself, could never +have done much by either process, but he is made differently--imitates +and emulates and all that. How I should be grateful if you would help me +by any word that should occur to you! I may easily do wrong, begin ill, +thro' too much anxiety--perhaps, however, all may be easier than seems +to me just now. + +I shall have a great comfort in talking to you--this writing is stiff, +ineffectual work. Pen is very well, cheerful now,--has his little horse +here. The place is singularly unspoiled, fresh and picturesque, and +lovely to heart's content. I wish you were here!--and if you knew +exactly what such a wish means, you would need no assuring in addition +that I am Yours affectionately and gratefully ever Robert Browning. + + +The person of whom he saw most was his sister-in-law, whom he visited, I +believe, every evening. Miss Barrett had been a favourite sister of Mrs. +Browning's, and this constituted a sufficient title to her husband's +affection. But she was also a woman to be loved for her own sake. Deeply +religious and very charitable, she devoted herself to visiting the +poor--a form of philanthropy which was then neither so widespread nor so +fashionable as it has since become; and she founded, in 1850, the first +Training School or Refuge which had ever existed for destitute little +girls. It need hardly be added that Mr. and Miss Browning co-operated in +the work. The little poem, 'The Twins', republished in 1855 in 'Men and +Women', was first printed (with Mrs. Browning's 'Plea for the Ragged +Schools of London') for the benefit of this Refuge. It was in Miss +Barrett's company that Mr. Browning used to attend the church of Mr. +Thomas Jones, to a volume of whose 'Sermons and Addresses' he wrote a +short introduction in 1884. + +On February 15, 1862, he writes again to Miss Blagden. + + +Feb. 15, '62. + +'. . . While I write, my heart is sore for a great calamity just +befallen poor Rossetti, which I only heard of last night--his wife, who +had been, as an invalid, in the habit of taking laudanum, swallowed +an overdose--was found by the poor fellow on his return from the +working-men's class in the evening, under the effects of it--help was +called in, the stomach-pump used; but she died in the night, about a +week ago. There has hardly been a day when I have not thought, "if I +can, to-morrow, I will go and see him, and thank him for his book, and +return his sister's poems." Poor, dear fellow! . . . + +'. . . Have I not written a long letter, for me who hate the sight of +a pen now, and see a pile of unanswered things on the table before me? +--on this very table. Do you tell me in turn all about yourself. I shall +be interested in the minutest thing you put down. What sort of weather +is it? You cannot but be better at your new villa than in the large +solitary one. There I am again, going up the winding way to it, and +seeing the herbs in red flower, and the butterflies on the top of the +wall under the olive-trees! Once more, good-bye. . . .' + + +The hatred of writing of which he here speaks refers probably to the +class of letters which he had lately been called upon to answer, and +which must have been painful in proportion to the kindness by which +they were inspired. But it returned to him many years later, in simple +weariness of the mental and mechanical act, and with such force that he +would often answer an unimportant note in person, rather than make the +seemingly much smaller exertion of doing so with his pen. It was the +more remarkable that, with the rarest exceptions, he replied to every +letter which came to him. + +The late summer of the former year had been entirely unrefreshing, in +spite of his acknowledgment of the charms of St.-Enogat. There was more +distraction and more soothing in the stay at Cambo and Biarritz, which +was chosen for the holiday of 1862. Years afterwards, when the thought +of Italy carried with it less longing and even more pain, Mr. Browning +would speak of a visit to the Pyrenees, if not a residence among them, +as one of the restful possibilities of his later and freer life. He +wrote to Miss Blagden: + + +Biarritz, Maison Gastonbide: Sept. 19, '62. + +'. . . I stayed a month at green pleasant little Cambo, and then came +here from pure inability to go elsewhere--St.-Jean de Luz, on which +I had reckoned, being still fuller of Spaniards who profit by the new +railway. This place is crammed with gay people of whom I see nothing +but their outsides. The sea, sands, and view of the Spanish coast and +mountains, are superb and this house is on the town's outskirts. I stay +till the end of the month, then go to Paris, and then get my neck back +into the old collar again. Pen has managed to get more enjoyment out of +his holiday than seemed at first likely--there was a nice French family +at Cambo with whom he fraternised, riding with the son and escorting +the daughter in her walks. His red cheeks look as they should. For me, I +have got on by having a great read at Euripides--the one book I brought +with me, besides attending to my own matters, my new poem that is about +to be; and of which the whole is pretty well in my head,--the Roman +murder story you know. + +'. . . How I yearn, yearn for Italy at the close of my life! . . .' + + +The 'Roman murder story' was, I need hardly say, to become 'The Ring and +the Book'. + +It has often been told, though with curious confusion as regards the +date, how Mr. Browning picked up the original parchment-bound record of +the Franceschini case, on a stall of the Piazza San Lorenzo. We read +in the first section of his own work that he plunged instantly into the +study of this record; that he had mastered it by the end of the day; and +that he then stepped out on to the terrace of his house amid the sultry +blackness and silent lightnings of the June night, as the adjacent +church of San Felice sent forth its chants, and voices buzzed in the +street below,--and saw the tragedy as a living picture unfold itself +before him. These were his last days at Casa Guidi. It was four years +before he definitely began the work. The idea of converting the story +into a poem cannot even have occurred to him for some little time, since +he offered it for prose treatment to Miss Ogle, the author of 'A Lost +Love'; and for poetic use, I am almost certain, to one of his leading +contemporaries. It was this slow process of incubation which gave +so much force and distinctness to his ultimate presentment of the +characters; though it infused a large measure of personal imagination, +and, as we shall see, of personal reminiscence, into their historical +truth. + +Before 'The Ring and the Book' was actually begun, 'Dramatis Personae' +and 'In a Balcony' were to be completed. Their production had been +delayed during Mrs. Browning's lifetime, and necessarily interrupted by +her death; but we hear of the work as progressing steadily during this +summer of 1862. + +A painful subject of correspondence had been also for some time engaging +Mr. Browning's thoughts and pen. A letter to Miss Blagden written +January 19, '63, is so expressive of his continued attitude towards the +questions involved that, in spite of its strong language, his family +advise its publication. The name of the person referred to will alone be +omitted. + + +'. . . Ever since I set foot in England I have been pestered with +applications for leave to write the Life of my wife--I have refused--and +there an end. I have last week received two communications from friends, +enclosing the letters of a certain . . . of . . ., asking them for +details of life and letters, for a biography he is engaged in--adding, +that he "has secured the correspondence with her old friend . . ." Think +of this beast working away at this, not deeming my feelings or those of +her family worthy of notice--and meaning to print letters written years +and years ago, on the most intimate and personal subjects to an "old +friend"--which, at the poor . . . [friend's] death fell into the hands +of a complete stranger, who, at once wanted to print them, but desisted +through Ba's earnest expostulation enforced by my own threat to take +law proceedings--as fortunately letters are copyright. I find this woman +died last year, and her son writes to me this morning that . . . got +them from him as autographs merely--he will try and get them back. . . , +evidently a blackguard, got my letter, which gave him his deserts, on +Saturday--no answer yet,--if none comes, I shall be forced to advertise +in the 'Times', and obtain an injunction. But what I suffer in feeling +the hands of these blackguards (for I forgot to say another man has been +making similar applications to friends) what I undergo with their paws +in my very bowels, you can guess, and God knows! No friend, of course, +would ever give up the letters--if anybody ever is forced to do that +which _she_ would have writhed under--if it ever _were_ necessary, why, _I_ +should be forced to do it, and, with any good to her memory and fame, +my own pain in the attempt would be turned into joy--I should _do_ it at +whatever cost: but it is not only unnecessary but absurdly useless--and, +indeed, it shall not be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along +with his breath. + +'I am going to reprint the Greek Christian Poets and another +essay--nothing that ought to be published shall be kept back,--and this +she certainly intended to correct, augment, and re-produce--but _I_ open +the doubled-up paper! Warn anyone you may think needs the warning of the +utter distress in which I should be placed were this scoundrel, or +any other of the sort, to baffle me and bring out the letters--I can't +prevent fools from uttering their folly upon her life, as they do on +every other subject, but the law protects property,--as these letters +are. Only last week, or so, the Bishop of Exeter stopped the publication +of an announced "Life"--containing extracts from his correspondence--and +so I shall do. . . .' + + +Mr. Browning only resented the exactions of modern biography in the +same degree as most other right-minded persons; but there was, to +his thinking, something specially ungenerous in dragging to light any +immature or unconsidered utterance which the writer's later judgment +would have disclaimed. Early work was always for him included in this +category; and here it was possible to disagree with him; since the +promise of genius has a legitimate interest from which no distance +from its subsequent fulfilment can detract. But there could be no +disagreement as to the rights and decencies involved in the present +case; and, as we hear no more of the letters to Mr. . . ., we may +perhaps assume that their intending publisher was acting in ignorance, +but did not wish to act in defiance, of Mr. Browning's feeling in the +matter. + +In the course of this year, 1863, Mr. Browning brought out, through +Chapman and Hall, the still well-known and well-loved three-volume +edition of his works, including 'Sordello', but again excluding +'Pauline'. A selection of his poems which appeared somewhat earlier, if +we may judge by the preface, dated November 1862, deserves mention as a +tribute to friendship. The volume had been prepared by John Forster and +Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), 'two friends,' as the preface +states, 'who from the first appearance of 'Paracelsus' have regarded its +writer as among the few great poets of the century.' Mr. Browning had +long before signalized his feeling for Barry Cornwall by the dedication +of 'Colombe's Birthday'. He discharged the present debt to Mr. Procter, +if such there was, by the attentions which he rendered to his infirm old +age. For many years he visited him every Sunday, in spite of a deafness +ultimately so complete that it was only possible to converse with him in +writing. These visits were afterwards, at her urgent request, continued +to Mr. Procter's widow. + + + + +Chapter 15 + +1863-1869 + +Pornic--'James Lee's Wife'--Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's--Letters to +Miss Blagden--His own Estimate of his Work--His Father's Illness and +Death; Miss Browning--Le Croisic--Academic Honours; Letter to the Master +of Balliol--Death of Miss Barrett--Audierne--Uniform Edition of his +Works--His rising Fame--'Dramatis Personae'--'The Ring and the Book'; +Character of Pompilia. + + + +The most constant contributions to Mr. Browning's history are supplied +during the next eight or nine years by extracts from his letters to Miss +Blagden. Our next will be dated from Ste.-Marie, near Pornic, where he +and his family again spent their holiday in 1864 and 1865. Some idea +of the life he led there is given at the close of a letter to Frederic +Leighton, August 17, 1863, in which he says: + + +'I live upon milk and fruit, bathe daily, do a good morning's work, read +a little with Pen and somewhat more by myself, go to bed early, and get +up earlyish--rather liking it all.' + + +This mention of a diet of milk and fruit recalls a favourite habit of +Mr. Browning's: that of almost renouncing animal food whenever he went +abroad. It was partly promoted by the inferior quality of foreign meat, +and showed no sign of specially agreeing with him, at all events in his +later years, when he habitually returned to England looking thinner and +more haggard than before he left it. But the change was always congenial +to his taste. + +A fuller picture of these simple, peaceful, and poetic Pornic days comes +to us through Miss Blagden, August 18: + + +'. . . This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like that +village where we stayed last year. Close to the sea--a hamlet of a dozen +houses, perfectly lonely--one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by +the sea for miles. Our house is the Mayor's, large enough, clean and +bare. If I could, I would stay just as I am for many a day. I feel out +of the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window; with the little +church, a field, a few houses, and the sea. On a weekday there is nobody +in the village, plenty of hay-stacks, cows and fowls; all our butter, +eggs, milk, are produced in the farm-house. Such a soft sea, and such a +mournful wind! + +'I wrote a poem yesterday of 120 lines, and mean to keep writing whether +I like it or not. . . .' + + +That 'window' was the 'Doorway' in 'James Lee's Wife'. The sea, the +field, and the fig-tree were visible from it. + +A long interval in the correspondence, at all events so far as we are +concerned, carries us to the December of 1864, and then Mr. Browning +wrote: + + +'. . . on the other hand, I feel such comfort and delight in doing the +best I can with my own object of life, poetry--which, I think, I never +could have seen the good of before, that it shows me I have taken the +root I _did_ take, _well_. I hope to do much more yet--and that the +flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow. I really have great +opportunities and advantages--on the whole, almost unprecedented ones--I +think, no other disturbances and cares than those I am most grateful for +being allowed to have. . . .' + + +One of our very few written reminiscences of Mr. Browning's social life +refers to this year, 1864, and to the evening, February 12, on which +he signed his will in the presence of Mr. Francis Palgrave and Alfred +Tennyson. It is inscribed in the diary of Mr. Thomas Richmond, then +chaplain to St. George's Hospital; and Mr. Reginald Palgrave has kindly +procured me a copy of it. A brilliant party had met at dinner at the +house of Mr. F. Palgrave, York Gate, Regent's Park; Mr. Richmond, having +fulfilled a prior engagement, had joined it later. 'There were, in +order,' he says, 'round the dinner-table (dinner being over), Gifford +Palgrave, Tennyson, Dr. John Ogle, Sir Francis H. Doyle, Frank Palgrave, +W. E. Gladstone, Browning, Sir John Simeon, Monsignor Patterson, +Woolner, and Reginald Palgrave.' + +Mr. Richmond closes his entry by saying he will never forget that +evening. The names of those whom it had brought together, almost all to +be sooner or later numbered among the Poet's friends, were indeed +enough to stamp it as worthy of recollection. One or two characteristic +utterances of Mr. Browning are, however, the only ones which it +seems advisable to repeat here. The conversation having turned on the +celebration of the Shakespeare ter-centenary, he said: 'Here we are +called upon to acknowledge Shakespeare, we who have him in our very +bones and blood, our very selves. The very recognition of Shakespeare's +merits by the Committee reminds me of nothing so apt as an illustration, +as the decree of the Directoire that men might acknowledge God.' + +Among the subjects discussed was the advisability of making schoolboys +write English verses as well as Latin and Greek. 'Woolner and Sir +Francis Doyle were for this; Gladstone and Browning against it.' + +Work had now found its fitting place in the Poet's life. It was no +longer the overflow of an irresistible productive energy; it was the +deliberate direction of that energy towards an appointed end. We hear +something of his own feeling concerning this in a letter of August '65, +again from Ste.-Marie, and called forth by some gossip concerning him +which Miss Blagden had connected with his then growing fame. + + +'. . . I suppose that what you call "my fame within these four years" +comes from a little of this gossiping and going about, and showing +myself to be alive: and so indeed some folks say--but I hardly think it: +for remember I was uninterruptedly (almost) in London from the time +I published 'Paracelsus' till I ended that string of plays with +'Luria'--and I used to go out then, and see far more of merely literary +people, critics &c. than I do now,--but what came of it? There were +always a few people who had a certain opinion of my poems, but nobody +cared to speak what he thought, or the things printed twenty-five years +ago would not have waited so long for a good word; but at last a new set +of men arrive who don't mind the conventionalities of ignoring one and +seeing everything in another--Chapman says, "the new orders come from +Oxford and Cambridge," and all my new cultivators are young men--more +than that, I observe that some of my old friends don't like at all +the irruption of outsiders who rescue me from their sober and private +approval, and take those words out of their mouths "which they always +meant to say" and never did. When there gets to be a general feeling of +this kind, that there must be something in the works of an author, the +reviews are obliged to notice him, such notice as it is--but what poor +work, even when doing its best! I mean poor in the failure to give a +general notion of the whole works; not a particular one of such and +such points therein. As I begun, so I shall end,--taking my own course, +pleasing myself or aiming at doing so, and thereby, I hope, pleasing +God. + +'As I never did otherwise, I never had any fear as to what I did going +ultimately to the bad,--hence in collected editions I always reprinted +everything, smallest and greatest. Do you ever see, by the way, the +numbers of the selection which Moxons publish? They are exclusively +poems omitted in that other selection by Forster; it seems little use +sending them to you, but when they are completed, if they give me a +few copies, you shall have one if you like. Just before I left London, +Macmillan was anxious to print a third selection, for his Golden +Treasury, which should of course be different from either--but _three_ +seem too absurd. There--enough of me-- + +'I certainly will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self before +I die; for one reason, that I may help old Pen the better; I was +much struck by the kind ways, and interest shown in me by the Oxford +undergraduates,--those introduced to me by Jowett.--I am sure they would +be the more helpful to my son. So, good luck to my great venture, the +murder-poem, which I do hope will strike you and all good lovers of +mine. . . .' + + +We cannot wonder at the touch of bitterness with which Mr. Browning +dwells on the long neglect which he had sustained; but it is at first +sight difficult to reconcile this high positive estimate of the value of +his poetry with the relative depreciation of his own poetic genius which +constantly marks his attitude towards that of his wife. The facts +are, however, quite compatible. He regarded Mrs. Browning's genius as +greater, because more spontaneous, than his own: owing less to life and +its opportunities; but he judged his own work as the more important, +because of the larger knowledge of life which had entered into its +production. He was wrong in the first terms of his comparison: for he +underrated the creative, hence spontaneous element in his own nature, +while claiming primarily the position of an observant thinker; and he +overrated the amount of creativeness implied by the poetry of his wife. +He failed to see that, given her intellectual endowments, and the lyric +gift, the characteristics of her genius were due to circumstances as +much as those of his own. Actual life is not the only source of poetic +inspiration, though it may perhaps be the best. Mrs. Browning as a poet +became what she was, not in spite of her long seclusion, but by help of +it. A touching paragraph, bearing upon this subject, is dated October +'65. + + +'. . . Another thing. I have just been making a selection of Ba's poems +which is wanted--how I have done it, I can hardly say--it is one dear +delight to know that the work of her goes on more effectually than +ever--her books are more and more read--certainly, sold. A new edition +of Aurora Leigh is completely exhausted within this year. . . .' + + +Of the thing next dearest to his memory, his Florentine home, he had +written in the January of this year: + + +'. . . Yes, Florence will never be _my_ Florence again. To build over or +beside Poggio seems barbarous and inexcusable. The Fiesole side don't +matter. Are they going to pull the old walls down, or any part of them, +I want to know? Why can't they keep the old city as a nucleus and build +round and round it, as many rings of houses as they please,--framing the +picture as deeply as they please? Is Casa Guidi to be turned into any +Public Office? I should think that its natural destination. If I am at +liberty to flee away one day, it will not be to Florence, I dare say. +As old Philipson said to me once of Jerusalem--"No, I don't want to go +there,--I can see it in my head." . . . Well, goodbye, dearest Isa. I +have been for a few minutes--nay, a good many,--so really with you in +Florence that it would be no wonder if you heard my steps up the lane to +your house. . . .' + + +Part of a letter written in the September of '65 from Ste.-Marie may be +interesting as referring to the legend of Pornic included in 'Dramatis +Personae'. + + +'. . . I suppose my "poem" which you say brings me and Pornic together +in your mind, is the one about the poor girl--if so, "fancy" (as I +hear you say) they have pulled down the church since I arrived last +month--there are only the shell-like, roofless walls left, for a few +weeks more; it was very old--built on a natural base of rock--small +enough, to be sure--so they build a smart new one behind it, and down +goes this; just as if they could not have pitched down their brick +and stucco farther away, and left the old place for the fishermen--so +here--the church is even more picturesque--and certain old Norman +ornaments, capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in the +doorway, are at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the road-side. The +people here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense of +picturesqueness in their clodpolls. . . .' + + +The little record continues through 1866. + + +Feb. 19, '66. + +'. . . I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a +dinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, is +staying in town for a few weeks,--and she is just what she was and +always will be--very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I +met him at a large party on Saturday--also Carlyle, whom I never met at +a "drum" before. . . . Pen is drawing our owl--a bird that is the light +of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways. . . .' + + + +May 19, '66. + +'. . . My father has been unwell,--he is better and will go into +the country the moment the east winds allow,--for in Paris,--as +here,--there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of sunshine. I hope to +hear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: he +is eighty-five, almost,--you see! otherwise his wonderful constitution +would keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is absolutely as +I always remember it,--and the other day when I wanted some information +about a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular bookful of notes +and extracts thereabout. . . .' + + + +June 20, '66. + +'My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, and arrived +time enough to pass twenty-four hours more with my father: he died on +the 14th--quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, which would have +overcome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties to the last--was +utterly indifferent to death,--asking with surprise what it was we were +affected about since he was perfectly happy?--and kept his own strange +sweetness of soul to the end--nearly his last words to me, as I was +fanning him, were "I am so afraid that I fatigue you, dear!" this, while +his sufferings were great; for the strength of his constitution seemed +impossible to be subdued. He wanted three weeks exactly to complete his +eighty-fifth year. So passed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, +religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would so easily have +made him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the +love of money or social influence meant. As it is, he was known by +half-a-dozen friends. He was worthy of being Ba's father--out of the +whole world, only he, so far as my experience goes. She loved him,--and +_he_ said, very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only that +picture had put into his head that there might be such a thing as the +worship of the images of saints. My sister will come and live with +me henceforth. You see what she loses. All her life has been spent in +caring for my mother, and seventeen years after that, my father. You may +be sure she does not rave and rend hair like people who have plenty to +atone for in the past; but she loses very much. I returned to London +last night. . . .' + + +During his hurried journey to Paris, Mr. Browning was mentally blessing +the Emperor for having abolished the system of passports, and thus +enabled him to reach his father's bedside in time. His early Italian +journeys had brought him some vexatious experience of the old order of +things. Once, at Venice, he had been mistaken for a well-known Liberal, +Dr. Bowring, and found it almost impossible to get his passport 'vise'; +and, on another occasion, it aroused suspicion by being 'too good'; +though in what sense I do not quite remember. + +Miss Browning did come to live with her brother, and was thenceforward +his inseparable companion. Her presence with him must therefore be +understood wherever I have had no special reason for mentioning it. + +They tried Dinard for the remainder of the summer; but finding it +unsuitable, proceeded by St.-Malo to Le Croisic, the little sea-side +town of south-eastern Brittany which two of Mr. Browning's poems have +since rendered famous. + +The following extract has no date. + + +Le Croisic, Loire Inferieure. + +'. . . We all found Dinard unsuitable, and after staying a few days at +St. Malo resolved to try this place, and well for us, since it serves +our purpose capitally. . . . We are in the most delicious and peculiar +old house I ever occupied, the oldest in the town--plenty of great +rooms--nearly as much space as in Villa Alberti. The little town, and +surrounding country are wild and primitive, even a trifle beyond Pornic +perhaps. Close by is Batz, a village where the men dress in white from +head to foot, with baggy breeches, and great black flap hats;--opposite +is Guerande, the old capital of Bretagne: you have read about it in +Balzac's 'Beatrix',--and other interesting places are near. The sea is +all round our peninsula, and on the whole I expect we shall like it very +much. . . .' + +Later. + +'. . . We enjoyed Croisic increasingly to the last--spite of three +weeks' vile weather, in striking contrast to the golden months at Pornic +last year. I often went to Guerande--once Sarianna and I walked from it +in two hours and something under,--nine miles:--though from our house, +straight over the sands and sea, it is not half the distance. . . .' + + +In 1867 Mr. Browning received his first and greatest academic honours. +The M.A. degree by diploma, of the University of Oxford, was conferred +on him in June;* and in the month of October he was made honorary Fellow +of Balliol College. Dr. Jowett allows me to publish the, as he terms it, +very characteristic letter in which he acknowledged the distinction. Dr. +Scott, afterwards Dean of Rochester, was then Master of Balliol. + + * 'Not a lower degree than that of D.C.L., but a much higher + honour, hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time except to + kings and royal personages. . . .' So the Keeper of the + Archives wrote to Mr. Browning at the time. + + +19, Warwick Crescent: Oct. 21, '67. + +Dear Dr. Scott,--I am altogether unable to say how I feel as to the +fact you communicate to me. I must know more intimately than you can how +little worthy I am of such an honour,--you hardly can set the value of +that honour, you who give, as I who take it. + +Indeed, there _are_ both 'duties and emoluments' attached to this +position,--duties of deep and lasting gratitude, and emoluments through +which I shall be wealthy my life long. I have at least loved learning +and the learned, and there needed no recognition of my love on their +part to warrant my professing myself, as I do, dear Dr. Scott, yours +ever most faithfully, Robert Browning. + + +In the following year he received and declined the virtual offer of the +Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews, rendered vacant by the +death of Mr. J. S. Mill. + +He returned with his sister to Le Croisic for the summer of 1867. + +In June 1868, Miss Arabel Barrett died, of a rheumatic affection of +the heart. As did her sister seven years before, she passed away in +Mr. Browning's arms. He wrote the event to Miss Blagden as soon as it +occurred, describing also a curious circumstance attendant on it. + + +19th June, '68. + +'. . . You know I am not superstitious--here is a note I made in a book, +Tuesday, July 21, 1863. "Arabel told me yesterday that she had been much +agitated by a dream which happened the night before, Sunday, July +19. She saw Her and asked 'when shall I be with you?' the reply was, +'Dearest, in five years,' whereupon Arabella woke. She knew in her dream +that it was not to the living she spoke."--In five years, within a +month of their completion--I had forgotten the date of the dream, and +supposed it was only three years ago, and that two had still to run. +Only a coincidence, but noticeable. . . .' + + +In August he writes again from Audierne, Finisterre (Brittany). + + +'. . . You never heard of this place, I daresay. After staying a +few days at Paris we started for Rennes,--reached Caen and halted a +little--thence made for Auray, where we made excursions to Carnac, +Lokmariaker, and Ste.-Anne d'Auray; all very interesting of their kind; +then saw Brest, Morlaix, St.-Pol de Leon, and the sea-port Roscoff,--our +intended bathing place--it was full of folk, however, and otherwise +impracticable, so we had nothing for it, but to "rebrousser chemin" and +get to the south-west again. At Quimper we heard (for a second time) +that Audierne would suit us exactly, and to it we came--happily, for +"suit" it certainly does. Look on the map for the most westerly point +of Bretagne--and of the mainland of Europe--there is niched Audierne, a +delightful quite unspoiled little fishing-town, with the open ocean in +front, and beautiful woods, hills and dales, meadows and lanes behind +and around,--sprinkled here and there with villages each with its fine +old Church. Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours' walk +in the course of which we visited a town, Pont Croix, with a beautiful +cathedral-like building amid the cluster of clean bright Breton +houses,--and a little farther is another church, "Notre Dame de +Comfort", with only a hovel or two round it, worth the journey from +England to see; we are therefore very well off--at an inn, I should say, +with singularly good, kind, and liberal people, so have no cares for the +moment. May you be doing as well! The weather has been most propitious, +and to-day is perfect to a wish. We bathe, but somewhat ingloriously, in +a smooth creek of mill-pond quietude, (there being no cabins on the bay +itself,) unlike the great rushing waves of Croisic--the water is much +colder. . . .' + + +The tribute contained in this letter to the merits of le Pere +Batifoulier and his wife would not, I think, be endorsed by the few +other English travellers who have stayed at their inn. The writer's +own genial and kindly spirit no doubt partly elicited, and still more +supplied, the qualities he saw in them. + +The six-volume, so long known as 'uniform' edition of Mr. Browning's +works, was brought out in the autumn of this year by Messrs. Smith, +Elder & Co.; practically Mr. George Murray Smith, who was to be +thenceforward his exclusive publisher and increasingly valued friend. In +the winter months appeared the first two volumes (to be followed in the +ensuing spring by the third and fourth) of 'The Ring and the Book'. + +With 'The Ring and the Book' Mr. Browning attained the full recognition +of his genius. The 'Athenaeum' spoke of it as the 'opus magnum' of +the generation; not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poetic +achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritual +treasure that England had produced since the days of Shakespeare. +His popularity was yet to come, so also the widespread reading of his +hitherto neglected poems; but henceforth whatever he published was sure +of ready acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation. +The ground had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in another +letter to Miss Blagden shows that, when 'The Ring and the Book' +appeared, a high place was already awaiting it outside those higher +academic circles in which its author's position was secured. + + +'. . . I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me pretty +offers for it. One sent to propose, last week, to publish it at his +risk, giving me _all_ the profits, and pay me the whole in advance--"for +the incidental advantages of my name"--the R. B. who for six months +once did not sell one copy of the poems! I ask 200 Pounds for the sheets +to America, and shall get it. . . .' + + +His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interest +in his productions; and we may fairly credit 'Dramatis Personae' with +having finally awakened his countrymen of all classes to the fact that a +great creative power had arisen among them. 'The Ring and the Book' +and 'Dramatis Personae' cannot indeed be dissociated in what was the +culminating moment in the author's poetic life, even more than +the zenith of his literary career. In their expression of all that +constituted the wide range and the characteristic quality of his genius, +they at once support and supplement each other. But a fact of more +distinctive biographical interest connects itself exclusively with the +later work. + +We cannot read the emotional passages of 'The Ring and the Book' without +hearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning's own: an echo, not +of his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past must have +accompanied him through every stage of the great work. Its subject had +come to him in the last days of his greatest happiness. It had lived +with him, though in the background of consciousness, through those of +his keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime, in which a +subsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation. He knew the +joy with which his wife would have witnessed the diligent performance +of this his self-imposed task. The beautiful dedication contained in the +first and last books was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning's +spiritual presence on this occasion was more than a presiding memory of +the heart. I am convinced that it entered largely into the conception +of 'Pompilia', and, so far as this depended on it, the character of the +whole work. In the outward course of her history, Mr. Browning proceeded +strictly on the ground of fact. His dramatic conscience would not have +allowed it otherwise. He had read the record of the case, as he has +been heard to say, fully eight times over before converting it into the +substance of his poem; and the form in which he finally cast it, was +that which recommended itself to him as true--which, within certain +limits, _was_ true. The testimony of those who watched by Pompilia's +death-bed is almost conclusive as to the absence of any criminal motive +to her flight, or criminal circumstance connected with it. Its time +proved itself to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly expected +motherhood, and may have had some reference to this fact. But the real +Pompilia was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, +and had made repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my memory much +deceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the historical +defence of her flight. If it appeared there at all, it was as a merely +practical incentive to her striving to place herself in safety. The +sudden rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of +the case, becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age +and her culture; it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is more +striking, it was not a natural development of Mr. Browning's imagination +concerning them. + +The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature--a fact which +renders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son; it finds +little or no expression in his work. The apotheosis of motherhood which +he puts forth through the aged priest in 'Ivan Ivanovitch' was due to +the poetic necessity of lifting a ghastly human punishment into the +sphere of Divine retribution. Even in the advancing years which +soften the father into the grandfather, the essential quality of early +childhood was not that which appealed to him. He would admire its +flower-like beauty, but not linger over it. He had no special emotion +for its helplessness. When he was attracted by a child it was through +the evidence of something not only distinct from, but opposed to this. +'It is the soul' (I see) 'in that speck of a body,' he said, not many +years ago, of a tiny boy--now too big for it to be desirable that I +should mention his name, but whose mother, if she reads this, will know +to whom I allude--who had delighted him by an act of intelligent grace +which seemed beyond his years. The ingenuously unbounded maternal pride, +the almost luscious maternal sentiment, of Pompilia's dying moments +can only associate themselves in our mind with Mrs. Browning's personal +utterances, and some notable passages in 'Casa Guidi Windows' +and 'Aurora Leigh'. Even the exalted fervour of the invocation to +Caponsacchi, its blending of spiritual ecstasy with half-realized +earthly emotion, has, I think, no parallel in her husband's work. + +'Pompilia' bears, still, unmistakably, the stamp of her author's genius. +Only he could have imagined her peculiar form of consciousness; her +childlike, wondering, yet subtle, perception of the anomalies of life. +He has raised the woman in her from the typical to the individual by +this distinguishing touch of his supreme originality; and thus infused +into her character a haunting pathos which renders it to many readers +the most exquisite in the whole range of his creations. For others +at the same time, it fails in the impressiveness because it lacks the +reality which habitually marks them. + +So much, however, is certain: Mr. Browning would never have accepted +this 'murder story' as the subject of a poem, if he could not in some +sense have made it poetical. It was only in an idealized Pompilia that +the material for such a process could be found. We owe it, therefore, to +the one departure from his usual mode of dramatic conception, that the +Poet's masterpiece has been produced. I know no other instance of what +can be even mistaken for reflected inspiration in the whole range of his +work, the given passages in 'Pauline' excepted. + +The postscript of a letter to Frederic Leighton written so far back as +October 17, 1864, is interesting in its connection with the preliminary +stages of this great undertaking. + + +'A favour, if you have time for it. Go into the church St. Lorenzo in +Lucina in the Corso--and look attentively at it--so as to describe it +to me on your return. The general arrangement of the building, if with a +nave--pillars or not--the number of altars, and any particularity there +may be--over the High Altar is a famous Crucifixion by Guido. It will be +of great use to me. I don't care about the _outsid_.' + + + + + +Chapter 16 + +1869-1873 + +Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower--Scotland; Visit to Lady Ashburton--Letters +to Miss Blagden--St.-Aubin; The Franco-Prussian War--'Herve +Riel'--Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith--'Balaustion's Adventure'; 'Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau'--'Fifine at the Fair'--Mistaken Theories of Mr. +Browning's Work--St.-Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. + + + +From 1869 to 1871 Mr. Browning published nothing; but in April 1870 +he wrote the sonnet called 'Helen's Tower', a beautiful tribute to the +memory of Helen, mother of Lord Dufferin, suggested by the memorial +tower which her son was erecting to her on his estate at Clandeboye. The +sonnet appeared in 1883, in the 'Pall Mall Gazette', and was reprinted +in 1886, in 'Sonnets of the Century', edited by Mr. Sharp; and again +in the fifth part of the Browning Society's 'Papers'; but it is still I +think sufficiently little known to justify its reproduction. + + Who hears of Helen's Tower may dream perchance + How the Greek Beauty from the Scaean Gate + Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, + Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. + + Hearts would leap otherwise at thy advance, + Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate! + Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, + Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance. + + The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange; + A transitory shame of long ago; + It dies into the sand from which it sprang; + But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change. + God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, + When all the morning-stars together sang. + +April 26, 1870. + + +Lord Dufferin is a warm admirer of Mr. Browning's genius. He also held +him in strong personal regard. + +In the summer of 1869 the poet, with his sister and son, changed the +manner of his holiday, by joining Mr. Story and his family in a tour in +Scotland, and a visit to Louisa, Lady Ashburton, at Loch Luichart Lodge; +but in the August of 1870 he was again in the primitive atmosphere of a +French fishing village, though one which had little to recommend it but +the society of a friend; it was M. Milsand's St.-Aubin. He had written, +February 24, to Miss Blagden, under the one inspiration which naturally +recurred in his correspondence with her. + + +'. . . So you, too, think of Naples for an eventual resting-place! Yes, +that is the proper basking-ground for "bright and aged snakes." Florence +would be irritating, and, on the whole, insufferable--Yet I never hear +of any one going thither but my heart is twitched. There is a good, +charming, little singing German lady, Miss Regan, who told me the other +day that she was just about revisiting her aunt, Madame Sabatier, whom +you may know, or know of--and I felt as if I should immensely like to +glide, for a long summer-day through the streets and between the old +stone-walls,--unseen come and unheard go--perhaps by some miracle, I +shall do so--and look up at Villa Brichieri as Arnold's Gypsy-Scholar +gave one wistful look at "the line of festal light in Christ Church +Hall," before he went to sleep in some forgotten grange. . . . I am so +glad I can be comfortable in your comfort. I fancy exactly how you feel +and see how you live: it _is_ the Villa Geddes of old days, I find. I well +remember the fine view from the upper room--that looking down the steep +hill, by the side of which runs the road you describe--that path was +always my preferred walk, for its shortness (abruptness) and the fine +old wall to your left (from the Villa) which is overgrown with weeds and +wild flowers--violets and ground-ivy, I remember. Oh, me! to find +myself some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned to +Florence--"ten minutes to the gate, ten minutes _home_!" I think I should +fairly end it all on the spot. . . .' + + +He writes again from St.-Aubin, August 19, 1870: + + +'Dearest Isa,--Your letter came prosperously to this little wild place, +where we have been, Sarianna and myself, just a week. Milsand lives in a +cottage with a nice bit of garden, two steps off, and we occupy another +of the most primitive kind on the sea-shore--which shore is a good sandy +stretch for miles and miles on either side. I don't think we were ever +quite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air from all quarters as here--the +weather is fine, and we do well enough. The sadness of the war and its +consequences go far to paralyse all our pleasure, however. . . . + +'Well, you are at Siena--one of the places I love best to remember. You +are returned--or I would ask you to tell me how the Villa Alberti wears, +and if the fig-tree behind the house is green and strong yet. I have +a pen-and-ink drawing of it, dated and signed the last day Ba was ever +there--"my fig tree--" she used to sit under it, reading and writing. +Nine years, or ten rather, since then! Poor old Landor's oak, too, +and his cottage, ought not to be forgotten. Exactly opposite this +house,--just over the way of the water,--shines every night the +light-house of Havre--a place I know well, and love very moderately: +but it always gives me a thrill as I see afar, _exactly_ a particular spot +which I was at along with her. At this moment, I see the white streak of +the phare in the sun, from the window where I write and I _think_. . . . +Milsand went to Paris last week, just before we arrived, to transport +his valuables to a safer place than his house, which is near the +fortifications. He is filled with as much despondency as can be--while +the old dear and perfect kindness remains. I never knew or shall know +his like among men. . . .' + + +The war did more than sadden Mr. and Miss Browning's visit to St.-Aubin; +it opposed unlooked-for difficulties to their return home. They had +remained, unconscious of the impending danger, till Sedan had been +taken, the Emperor's downfall proclaimed, and the country suddenly +placed in a state of siege. One morning M. Milsand came to them in +anxious haste, and insisted on their starting that very day. An order, +he said, had been issued that no native should leave the country, and +it only needed some unusually thick-headed Maire for Mr. Browning to be +arrested as a runaway Frenchman or a Prussian spy. The usual passenger +boats from Calais and Boulogne no longer ran; but there was, he +believed, a chance of their finding one at Havre. They acted on this +warning, and discovered its wisdom in the various hindrances which they +found on their way. Everywhere the horses had been requisitioned for the +war. The boat on which they had relied to take them down the river +to Caen had been stopped that very morning; and when they reached the +railroad they were told that the Prussians would be at the other end +before night. At last they arrived at Honfleur, where they found an +English vessel which was about to convey cattle to Southampton; and in +this, setting out at midnight, they made their passage to England. + +Some words addressed to Miss Blagden, written I believe in 1871, once +more strike a touching familiar note. + + +'. . . But _no_, dearest Isa. The simple truth is that _she_ was the poet, +and I the clever person by comparison--remember her limited experience +of all kinds, and what she made of it. Remember on the other hand, how +my uninterrupted health and strength and practice with the world have +helped me. . . .' + + +'Balaustion's Adventure' and 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' were +published, respectively, in August and December 1871. They had been +preceded in the March of the same year by a ballad, 'Herve Riel', +afterwards reprinted in the 'Pacchiarotto' volume, and which Mr. +Browning now sold to the 'Cornhill Magazine' for the benefit of the +French sufferers by the war. + +The circumstances of this little transaction, unique in Mr. Browning's +experience, are set forth in the following letter: + + +Feb. 4, '71. + +'My dear Smith,--I want to give something to the people in Paris, and +can afford so very little just now, that I am forced upon an expedient. +Will you buy of me that poem which poor Simeon praised in a letter +you saw, and which I like better than most things I have done of +late?--Buy,--I mean,--the right of printing it in the Pall Mall and, +if you please, the Cornhill also,--the copyright remaining with me. You +remember you wanted to print it in the Cornhill, and I was obstinate: +there is hardly any occasion on which I should be otherwise, if the +printing any poem of mine in a magazine were purely for my own sake: so, +any liberality you exercise will not be drawn into a precedent against +you. I fancy this is a case in which one may handsomely puff one's own +ware, and I venture to call my verses good for once. I send them to +you directly, because expedition will render whatever I contribute more +valuable: for when you make up your mind as to how liberally I shall be +enabled to give, you must send me a cheque and I will send the same as +the "Product of a Poem"--so that your light will shine deservedly. Now, +begin proceedings by reading the poem to Mrs. Smith,--by whose judgment +I will cheerfully be bound; and, with her approval, second my endeavour +as best you can. Would,--for the love of France,--that this were a "Song +of a Wren"--then should the guineas equal the lines; as it is, do what +you safely may for the song of a Robin--Browning--who is yours very +truly, into the bargain. + +'P.S. The copy is so clear and careful that you might, with a good +Reader, print it on Monday, nor need my help for corrections: I shall +however be always at home, and ready at a moment's notice: return the +copy, if you please, as I promised it to my son long ago.' + + +Mr. Smith gave him 100 guineas as the price of the poem. + +He wrote concerning the two longer poems, first probably at the close of +this year, and again in January 1872, to Miss Blagden. + + +'. . . By this time you have got my little book ('Hohenstiel') and seen +for yourself whether I make the best or worst of the case. I think, in +the main, he meant to do what I say, and, but for weakness,--grown more +apparent in his last years than formerly,--would have done what I say he +did not.* I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, _et pour +cause_: better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made, and +gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in the +last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers' best. I am +told my little thing is succeeding--sold 1,400 in the first five days, +and before any notice appeared. I remember that the year I made the +little rough sketch in Rome, '60, my account for the last six months +with Chapman was--_nil_, not one copy disposed of! . . . + + * This phrase is a little misleading. + +'. . . I am glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh calls my +eulogium on the second empire,--which it is not, any more than what +another wiseacre affirms it to be "a scandalous attack on the old +constant friend of England"--it is just what I imagine the man might, if +he pleased, say for himself.' + + +Mr. Browning continues: + + +'Spite of my ailments and bewailments I have just all but finished +another poem of quite another kind, which shall amuse you in the spring, +I hope! I don't go sound asleep at all events. 'Balaustion'--the second +edition is in the press I think I told you. 2,500 in five months, is a +good sale for the likes of me. But I met Henry Taylor (of Artevelde) +two days ago at dinner, and he said he had never gained anything by his +books, which surely is a shame--I mean, if no buyers mean no +readers. . . .' + +'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' was written in Scotland, where Mr. +Browning was the guest of Mr. Ernest Benzon: having left his sister to +the care of M. and Madame Milsand at St.-Aubin. The ailment he speaks +of consisted, I believe, of a severe cold. Another of the occurrences +of 1871 was Mr. Browning's election as Life Governor of the London +University. + +A passage from a letter dated March 30, '72, bears striking testimony to +the constant warmth of his affections. + + +'. . . The misfortune, which I did not guess when I accepted the +invitation, is that I shall lose some of the last days of Milsand, who +has been here for the last month: no words can express the love I have +for him, you know. He is increasingly precious to me. . . . Waring +came back the other day, after thirty years' absence, the same as +ever,--nearly. He has been Prime Minister at New Zealand for a year and +a half, but gets tired, and returns home with a poem.'* + + * 'Ranolf and Amohia'. + +This is my last extract from the correspondence with Miss Blagden. Her +death closed it altogether within the year. + + +It is difficult to infer from letters, however intimate, the dominant +state of the writer's mind: most of all to do so in Mr. Browning's case, +from such passages of his correspondence as circumstances allow me +to quote. Letters written in intimacy, and to the same friend, often +express a recurrent mood, a revived set of associations, which for the +moment destroys the habitual balance of feeling. The same effect is +sometimes produced in personal intercourse; and the more varied the +life, the more versatile the nature, the more readily in either case +will a lately unused spring of emotion well up at the passing touch. +We may even fancy we read into the letters of 1870 that eerie, haunting +sadness of a cherished memory from which, in spite of ourselves, life +is bearing us away. We may also err in so doing. But literary creation, +patiently carried on through a given period, is usually a fair +reflection of the general moral and mental conditions under which it has +taken place; and it would be hard to imagine from Mr. Browning's work +during these last ten years that any but gracious influences had been +operating upon his genius, any more disturbing element than the sense of +privation and loss had entered into his inner life. + +Some leaven of bitterness must, nevertheless, have been working within +him, or he could never have produced that piece of perplexing cynicism, +'Fifine at the Fair'--the poem referred to as in progress in a letter to +Miss Blagden, and which appeared in the spring of 1872. The disturbing +cause had been also of long standing; for the deeper reactive processes +of Mr. Browning's nature were as slow as its more superficial response +was swift; and while 'Dramatis Personae', 'The Ring and the Book', +and even 'Balaustion's Adventure', represented the gradually perfected +substance of his poetic imagination, 'Fifine at the Fair' was as the +froth thrown up by it during the prolonged simmering which was to leave +it clear. The work displays the iridescent brightness as well as the +occasional impurity of this froth-like character. Beauty and ugliness +are, indeed, almost inseparable in the moral impression which it leaves +upon us. The author has put forth a plea for self-indulgence with a +much slighter attempt at dramatic disguise than his special pleadings +generally assume; and while allowing circumstances to expose the +sophistry of the position, and punish its attendant act, he does not +sufficiently condemn it. But, in identifying himself for the moment with +the conception of a Don Juan, he has infused into it a tenderness and +a poetry with which the true type had very little in common, and which +retard its dramatic development. Those who knew Mr. Browning, or who +thoroughly know his work, may censure, regret, fail to understand +'Fifine at the Fair'; they will never in any important sense misconstrue +it. + +But it has been so misconstrued by an intelligent and not unsympathetic +critic; and his construction may be endorsed by other persons in the +present, and still more in the future, in whom the elements of a truer +judgment are wanting. It seems, therefore, best to protest at once +against the misjudgment, though in so doing I am claiming for it an +attention which it may not seem to deserve. I allude to Mr. Mortimer's +'Note on Browning' in the 'Scottish Art Review' for December 1889. This +note contains a summary of Mr. Browning's teaching, which it resolves +into the moral equivalent of the doctrine of the conservation of force. +Mr. Mortimer assumes for the purpose of his comparison that the exercise +of force means necessarily moving on; and according to him Mr. Browning +prescribes action at any price, even that of defying the restrictions +of moral law. He thus, we are told, blames the lovers in 'The Statue and +the Bust' for their failure to carry out what was an immoral intention; +and, in the person of his 'Don Juan', defends a husband's claim to +relieve the fixity of conjugal affection by varied adventure in the +world of temporary loves: the result being 'the negation of that +convention under which we habitually view life, but which for some +reason or other breaks down when we have to face the problems of a +Goethe, a Shelley, a Byron, or a Browning.' + +Mr. Mortimer's generalization does not apply to 'The Statue and the +Bust', since Mr. Browning has made it perfectly clear that, in this +case, the intended act is postponed without reference to its morality, +and simply in consequence of a weakness of will, which would have been +as paralyzing to a good purpose as it was to the bad one; but it is not +without superficial sanction in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and the part which +the author allowed himself to play in it did him an injustice only to be +measured by the inference which it has been made to support. There could +be no mistake more ludicrous, were it less regrettable, than that of +classing Mr. Browning, on moral grounds, with Byron or Shelley; even +in the case of Goethe the analogy breaks down. The evidence of the +foregoing pages has rendered all protest superfluous. But the suggested +moral resemblance to the two English poets receives a striking comment +in a fact of Mr. Browning's life which falls practically into the +present period of our history: his withdrawal from Shelley of the +devotion of more than forty years on account of an act of heartlessness +towards his first wife which he held to have been proved against him. + +The sweet and the bitter lay, indeed, very close to each other at the +sources of Mr. Browning's inspiration. Both proceeded, in great measure, +from his spiritual allegiance to the past--that past by which it was +impossible that he should linger, but which he could not yet leave +behind. The present came to him with friendly greeting. He was +unconsciously, perhaps inevitably, unjust to what it brought. The +injustice reacted upon himself, and developed by degrees into the +cynical mood of fancy which became manifest in 'Fifine at the Fair'. + +It is true that, in the light of this explanation, we see an effect very +unlike its cause; but the chemistry of human emotion is like that of +natural life. It will often form a compound in which neither of its +constituents can be recognized. This perverse poem was the last as well +as the first manifestation of an ungenial mood of Mr. Browning's mind. +A slight exception may be made for some passages in 'Red Cotton Nightcap +Country', and for one of the poems of the 'Pacchiarotto' volume; but +otherwise no sign of moral or mental disturbance betrays itself in his +subsequent work. The past and the present gradually assumed for him a +more just relation to each other. He learned to meet life as it offered +itself to him with a more frank recognition of its good gifts, a more +grateful response to them. He grew happier, hence more genial, as the +years advanced. + +It was not without misgiving that Mr. Browning published 'Fifine at +the Fair'; but many years were to pass before he realized the kind of +criticism to which it had exposed him. The belief conveyed in the +letter to Miss Blagden that what proceeds from a genuine inspiration is +justified by it, combined with the indifference to public opinion +which had been engendered in him by its long neglect, made him slow to +anticipate the results of external judgment, even where he was in some +degree prepared to endorse them. For his value as a poet, it was best +so. + +The August of 1872 and of 1873 again found him with his sister at +St.-Aubin, and the earlier visit was an important one: since it supplied +him with the materials of his next work, of which Miss Annie Thackeray, +there also for a few days, suggested the title. The tragic drama which +forms the subject of Mr. Browning's poem had been in great part enacted +in the vicinity of St.-Aubin; and the case of disputed inheritance to +which it had given rise was pending at that moment in the tribunals of +Caen. The prevailing impression left on Miss Thackeray's mind by this +primitive district was, she declared, that of white cotton nightcaps +(the habitual headgear of the Normandy peasants). She engaged to write +a story called 'White Cotton Nightcap Country'; and Mr. Browning's quick +sense of both contrast and analogy inspired the introduction of +this emblem of repose into his own picture of that peaceful, prosaic +existence, and of the ghastly spiritual conflict to which it had served +as background. He employed a good deal of perhaps strained ingenuity in +the opening pages of the work, in making the white cap foreshadow the +red, itself the symbol of liberty, and only indirectly connected with +tragic events; and he would, I think, have emphasized the irony of +circumstance in a manner more characteristic of himself, if he had laid +his stress on the remoteness from 'the madding crowd', and repeated +Miss Thackeray's title. There can, however, be no doubt that his poetic +imagination, no less than his human insight, was amply vindicated by his +treatment of the story. + +On leaving St.-Aubin he spent a month at Fontainebleau, in a house +situated on the outskirts of the forest; and here his principal indoor +occupation was reading the Greek dramatists, especially Aeschylus, to +whom he had returned with revived interest and curiosity. 'Red Cotton +Nightcap Country' was not begun till his return to London in the later +autumn. It was published in the early summer of 1873. + + + + +Chapter 17 + +1873-1878 + +London Life--Love of Music--Miss Egerton-Smith--Periodical Nervous +Exhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes' Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'The +Inn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and other Poems'--Visits to Oxford and +Cambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St. Andrews; Letter +from Professor Knight--In the Savoyard Mountains--Death of Miss +Egerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of Croisic'--Selections from +his Works. + + + +The period on which we have now entered, covering roughly the ten or +twelve years which followed the publication of 'The Ring and the Book', +was the fullest in Mr. Browning's life; it was that in which the varied +claims made by it on his moral, and above all his physical energies, +found in him the fullest power of response. He could rise early and go +to bed late--this, however, never from choice; and occupy every hour of +the day with work or pleasure, in a manner which his friends recalled +regretfully in later years, when of two or three engagements which +ought to have divided his afternoon, a single one--perhaps only the most +formally pressing--could be fulfilled. Soon after his final return to +England, while he still lived in comparative seclusion, certain habits +of friendly intercourse, often superficial, but always binding, had +rooted themselves in his life. London society, as I have also implied, +opened itself to him in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truer +to say, drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even before +the mellowing kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the least +substantial of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of the +poet--for a while the natural ambition of the man--found satisfaction in +it. For a short time, indeed, he entered into the fashionable routine of +country-house visiting. Besides the instances I have already given, +and many others which I may have forgotten, he was heard of, during the +earlier part of this decade, as the guest of Lord Carnarvon at Highclere +Castle, of Lord Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, of Lord Brownlow and his +mother, Lady Marian Alford, at Belton and Ashridge. Somewhat later, +he stayed with Mr. and Lady Alice Gaisford at a house they temporarily +occupied on the Sussex downs; with Mr. Cholmondeley at Condover, and, +much more recently, at Aynhoe Park with Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright. Kind +and pressing, and in themselves very tempting invitations of this nature +came to him until the end of his life; but he very soon made a practice +of declining them, because their acceptance could only renew for him the +fatigues of the London season, while the tantalizing beauty and +repose of the country lay before his eyes; but such visits, while they +continued, were one of the necessary social experiences which brought +their grist to his mill. + +And now, in addition to the large social tribute which he received, and +had to pay, he was drinking in all the enjoyment, and incurring all the +fatigue which the London musical world could create for him. In Italy +he had found the natural home of the other arts. The one poem, 'Old +Pictures in Florence', is sufficiently eloquent of long communion with +the old masters and their works; and if his history in Florence and Rome +had been written in his own letters instead of those of his wife, they +must have held many reminiscences of galleries and studios, and of the +places in which pictures are bought and sold. But his love for music +was as certainly starved as the delight in painting and sculpture was +nourished; and it had now grown into a passion, from the indulgence of +which he derived, as he always declared, some of the most beneficent +influences of his life. It would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that +he attended every important concert of the season, whether isolated or +given in a course. There was no engagement possible or actual, which did +not yield to the discovery of its clashing with the day and hour fixed +for one of these. His frequent companion on such occasions was Miss +Egerton-Smith. + +Miss Smith became only known to Mr. Browning's general acquaintance +through the dedicatory 'A. E. S.' of 'La Saisiaz'; but she was, at the +time of her death, one of his oldest women friends. He first met her as +a young woman in Florence when she was visiting there; and the love +for and proficiency in music soon asserted itself as a bond of sympathy +between them. They did not, however, see much of each other till he had +finally left Italy, and she also had made her home in London. She there +led a secluded life, although free from family ties, and enjoying a +large income derived from the ownership of an important provincial +paper. Mr. Browning was one of the very few persons whose society she +cared to cultivate; and for many years the common musical interest took +the practical, and for both of them convenient form, of their going to +concerts together. After her death, in the autumn of 1877, he almost +mechanically renounced all the musical entertainments to which she had +so regularly accompanied him. The special motive and special facility +were gone--she had been wont to call for him in her carriage; the +habit was broken; there would have been first pain, and afterwards an +unwelcome exertion in renewing it. Time was also beginning to sap his +strength, while society, and perhaps friendship, were making increasing +claims upon it. It may have been for this same reason that music after +a time seemed to pass out of his life altogether. Yet its almost sudden +eclipse was striking in the case of one who not only had been so +deeply susceptible to its emotional influences, so conversant with +its scientific construction and its multitudinous forms, but who was +acknowledged as 'musical' by those who best knew the subtle and complex +meaning of that often misused term. + +Mr. Browning could do all that I have said during the period through +which we are now following him; but he could not quite do it with +impunity. Each winter brought its searching attack of cold and cough; +each summer reduced him to the state of nervous prostration or physical +apathy of which I have already spoken, and which at once rendered change +imperative, and the exertion of seeking it almost intolerable. His +health and spirits rebounded at the first draught of foreign air; the +first breath from an English cliff or moor might have had the same +result. But the remembrance of this fact never nerved him to the +preliminary effort. The conviction renewed itself with the close of +every season, that the best thing which could happen to him would be to +be left quiet at home; and his disinclination to face even the idea +of moving equally hampered his sister in her endeavour to make timely +arrangements for their change of abode. + +This special craving for rest helped to limit the area from which their +summer resort could be chosen. It precluded all idea of 'pension'-life, +hence of any much-frequented spot in Switzerland or Germany. It was +tacitly understood that the shortening days were not to be passed in +England. Italy did not yet associate itself with the possibilities of +a moderately short absence; the resources of the northern French coast +were becoming exhausted; and as the August of 1874 approached, the +question of how and where this and the following months were to be spent +was, perhaps, more than ever a perplexing one. It was now Miss Smith who +became the means of its solution. She had more than once joined Mr. and +Miss Browning at the seaside. She was anxious this year to do so again, +and she suggested for their meeting a quiet spot called Mers, almost +adjoining the fashionable Treport, but distinct from it. It was agreed +that they should try it; and the experiment, which they had no reason +to regret, opened also in some degree a way out of future difficulties. +Mers was young, and had the defect of its quality. Only one desirable +house was to be found there; and the plan of joint residence became +converted into one of joint housekeeping, in which Mr. and Miss Browning +at first refused to concur, but which worked so well that it was renewed +in the three ensuing summers: Miss Smith retaining the initiative in +the choice of place, her friends the right of veto upon it. They stayed +again together in 1875 at Villers, on the coast of Normandy; in 1876 at +the Isle of Arran; in 1877 at a house called La Saisiaz--Savoyard for +the sun--in the Saleve district near Geneva. + +The autumn months of 1874 were marked for Mr. Browning by an important +piece of work: the production of 'Aristophanes' Apology'. It was far +advanced when he returned to London in November, after a visit to +Antwerp, where his son was studying art under M. Heyermans; and its much +later appearance must have been intended to give breathing time to the +readers of 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. Mr. Browning subsequently +admitted that he sometimes, during these years, allowed active literary +occupation to interfere too much with the good which his holiday might +have done him; but the temptations to literary activity were this time +too great to be withstood. The house occupied by him at Mers (Maison +Robert) was the last of the straggling village, and stood on a rising +cliff. In front was the open sea; beyond it a long stretch of down; +everywhere comparative solitude. Here, in uninterrupted quiet, and in a +room devoted to his use, Mr. Browning would work till the afternoon was +advanced, and then set forth on a long walk over the cliffs, often in +the face of a wind which, as he wrote of it at the time, he could lean +against as if it were a wall. And during this time he was living, not +only in his work, but with the man who had inspired it. The image of +Aristophanes, in the half-shamed insolence, the disordered majesty, in +which he is placed before the reader's mind, was present to him from +the first moment in which the Defence was conceived. What was still more +interesting, he could see him, hear him, think with him, speak for him, +and still inevitably condemn him. No such instance of always ingenious, +and sometimes earnest pleading foredoomed to complete discomfiture, +occurs in Mr. Browning's works. + +To Aristophanes he gave the dramatic sympathy which one lover of life +can extend to another, though that other unduly extol its lower forms. +To Euripides he brought the palm of the higher truth, to his work the +tribute of the more pathetic human emotion. Even these for a moment +ministered to the greatness of Aristophanes, in the tear shed by him to +the memory of his rival, in the hour of his own triumph; and we may be +quite sure that when Mr. Browning depicted that scene, and again when he +translated the great tragedian's words, his own eyes were dimmed. Large +tears fell from them, and emotion choked his voice, when he first +read aloud the transcript of the 'Herakles' to a friend, who was often +privileged to hear him. + +Mr. Browning's deep feeling for the humanities of Greek literature, and +his almost passionate love for the language, contrasted strongly with +his refusal to regard even the first of Greek writers as models of +literary style. The pretensions raised for them on this ground were +inconceivable to him; and his translation of the 'Agamemnon', published +1877, was partly made, I am convinced, for the pleasure of exposing +these claims, and of rebuking them. His preface to the transcript gives +evidence of this. The glee with which he pointed to it when it first +appeared was no less significant. + +At Villers, in 1875, he only corrected the proofs of 'The Inn Album' for +publication in November. When the party started for the Isle of Arran, +in the autumn of 1876, the 'Pacchiarotto' volume had already appeared. + +When Mr. Browning discontinued his short-lived habit of visiting away +from home, he made an exception in favour of the Universities. His +occasional visits to Oxford and Cambridge were maintained till the very +end of his life, with increasing frequency in the former case; and the +days spent at Balliol and Trinity afforded him as unmixed a pleasure +as was compatible with the interruption of his daily habits, and with a +system of hospitality which would detain him for many hours at table. +A vivid picture of them is given in two letters, dated January 20 and +March 10, 1877, and addressed to one of his constant correspondents, +Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of Shalstone Manor, Buckingham. + + +Dear Friend, I have your letter of yesterday, and thank you all I can +for its goodness and graciousness to me unworthy . . . I returned on +Thursday--the hospitality of our Master being not easy to set aside. +But to begin with the beginning: the passage from London to Oxford was +exceptionally prosperous--the train was full of men my friends. I was +welcomed on arriving by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms,--then +came the pleasant meeting with Jowett who at once took me to tea with +his other guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London, Dean +of Westminster, the Airlies, Cardwells, male and female. Then came the +banquet--(I enclose you the plan having no doubt that you will recognise +the name of many an acquaintance: please return it)--and, the dinner +done, speechifying set in vigorously. The Archbishop proposed the +standing 'Floreat domus de Balliolo'--to which the Master made due +and amusing answer, himself giving the health of the Primate. Lord +Coleridge, in a silvery speech, drank to the University, responded to by +the Vice-Chancellor. I forget who proposed the visitors--the Bishop of +London, perhaps Lord Cardwell. Professor Smith gave the two Houses +of Parliament,--Jowett, the Clergy, coupling with it the name of your +friend Mr. Rogers--on whom he showered every kind of praise, and Mr. +Rogers returned thanks very characteristically and pleasantly. Lord +Lansdowne drank to the Bar (Mr. Bowen), Lord Camperdown to--I really +forget what: Mr. Green to Literature and Science delivering a most +undeserved eulogium on myself, with a more rightly directed one on +Arnold, Swinburne, and the old pride of Balliol, Clough: this was +cleverly and almost touchingly answered by dear Mat Arnold. Then the +Dean of Westminster gave the Fellows and Scholars--and then--twelve +o'clock struck. We were, counting from the time of preliminary +assemblage, six hours and a half engaged: _fully_ five and a half nailed +to our chairs at the table: but the whole thing was brilliant, genial, +and suggestive of many and various thoughts to me--and there was +a warmth, earnestness, and yet refinement about it which I never +experienced in any previous public dinner. Next morning I breakfasted +with Jowett and his guests, found that return would be difficult: while +as the young men were to return on Friday there would be no opposition +to my departure on Thursday. The morning was dismal with rain, but after +luncheon there was a chance of getting a little air, and I walked for +more than two hours, then heard service in New Coll.--then dinner again: +my room had been prepared in the Master's house. So, on Thursday, after +yet another breakfast, I left by the noon-day train, after all sorts of +kindly offices from the Master. . . . No reporters were suffered to be +present--the account in yesterday's Times was furnished by one or more +of the guests; it is quite correct as far as it goes. There were, +I find, certain little paragraphs which must have been furnished by +'guessers': Swinburne, set down as present--was absent through his +Father's illness: the Cardinal also excused himself as did the Bishop of +Salisbury and others. . . . Ever yours R. Browning. + + +The second letter, from Cambridge, was short and written in haste, at +the moment of Mr. Browning's departure; but it tells the same tale of +general kindness and attention. Engagements for no less than six meals +had absorbed the first day of the visit. The occasion was that of +Professor Joachim's investiture with his Doctor's degree; and Mr. +Browning declares that this ceremony, the concert given by the great +violinist, and his society, were 'each and all' worth the trouble of +the journey. He himself was to receive the Cambridge degree of LL.D. in +1879, the Oxford D.C.L. in 1882. A passage in another letter addressed +to the same friend, refers probably to a practical reminiscence of 'Red +Cotton Nightcap Country', which enlivened the latter experience, and +which Mrs. Fitz-Gerald had witnessed with disapprobation.* + + * An actual red cotton nightcap had been made to flutter + down on to the Poet's head. + + +. . . You are far too hard on the very harmless drolleries of the young +men, licensed as they are moreover by immemorial usage. Indeed there +used to be a regularly appointed jester, 'Filius Terrae' he was called, +whose business it was to jibe and jeer at the honoured ones, by way of +reminder that all human glories are merely gilded bubbles and must not +be fancied metal. You saw that the Reverend Dons escaped no more than +the poor Poet--or rather I should say than myself the poor Poet--for +I was pleased to observe with what attention they listened to the +Newdigate. . . . Ever affectionately yours, R. Browning. + + +In 1875 he was unanimously nominated by its Independent Club, to the +office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1877 he again +received the offer of the Rectorship of St. Andrews, couched in very +urgent and flattering terms. A letter addressed to him from this +University by Dr. William Knight, Professor of Moral Philosophy there, +which I have his permission to publish, bears witness to what had +long been and was always to remain a prominent fact of Mr. Browning's +literary career: his great influence on the minds of the rising +generation of his countrymen. + + +The University, St. Andrews N.B.: Nov. 17, 1877. + +My dear Sir,--. . . The students of this University, in which I have +the honour to hold office, have nominated you as their Lord Rector; and +intend unanimously, I am told, to elect you to that office on Thursday. + +I believe that hitherto no Rector has been chosen by the undivided +suffrage of any Scottish University. They have heard however that you +are unable to accept the office: and your committee, who were deeply +disappointed to learn this afternoon of the way in which you have been +informed of their intentions, are, I believe, writing to you on the +subject. So keen is their regret that they intend respectfully to wait +upon you on Tuesday morning by deputation, and ask if you cannot waive +your difficulties in deference to their enthusiasm, and allow them to +proceed with your election. + +Their suffrage may, I think, be regarded as one sign of how the +thoughtful youth of Scotland estimate the work you have done in the +world of letters. + +And permit me to say that while these Rectorial elections in the other +Universities have frequently turned on local questions, or been inspired +by political partisanship, St. Andrews has honourably sought to choose +men distinguished for literary eminence, and to make the Rectorship a +tribute at once of intellectual and moral esteem. + +May I add that when the 'perfervidum ingenium' of our northern race +takes the form not of youthful hero-worship, but of loyal admiration and +respectful homage, it is a very genuine affair. In the present instance +I may say it is no mere outburst of young undisciplined enthusiasm, but +an honest expression of intellectual and moral indebtedness, the genuine +and distinct tribute of many minds that have been touched to some higher +issues by what you have taught them. They do not presume to speak of +your place in English literature. They merely tell you by this proffered +honour (the highest in their power to bestow), how they have felt your +influence over them. + +My own obligations to you, and to the author of Aurora Leigh, are such, +that of them 'silence is golden'. Yours ever gratefully. William Knight. + + +Mr. Browning was deeply touched and gratified by these professions of +esteem. He persisted nevertheless in his refusal. The Glasgow nomination +had also been declined by him. + +On August 17, 1877, he wrote to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald from La Saisiaz: + + +'How lovely is this place in its solitude and seclusion, with its trees +and shrubs and flowers, and above all its live mountain stream which +supplies three fountains, and two delightful baths, a marvel of delicate +delight framed in with trees--I bathe there twice a day--and then what +wonderful views from the chalet on every side! Geneva lying under +us, with the lake and the whole plain bounded by the Jura and our own +Saleve, which latter seems rather close behind our house, and yet takes +a hard hour and a half to ascend--all this you can imagine since you +know the environs of the town; the peace and quiet move me the most--And +I fancy I shall drowse out the two months or more, doing no more of +serious work than reading--and that is virtuous renunciation of the +glorious view to my right here--as I sit aerially like Euripides, and +see the clouds come and go and the view change in correspondence with +them. It will help me to get rid of the pain which attaches itself to +the recollections of Lucerne and Berne "in the old days when the Greeks +suffered so much," as Homer says. But a very real and sharp pain touched +me here when I heard of the death of poor Virginia March whom I knew +particularly, and parted with hardly a fortnight ago, leaving her +affectionate and happy as ever. The tones of her voice as on one +memorable occasion she ejaculated repeatedly 'Good friend!' are fresh +still. Poor Virginia! . . .' + + +Mr. Browning was more than quiescent during this stay in the Savoyard +mountains. He was unusually depressed, and unusually disposed to regard +the absence from home as a banishment; and he tried subsequently to +account for this condition by the shadow which coming trouble sometimes +casts before it. It was more probably due to the want of the sea air +which he had enjoyed for so many years, and to that special oppressive +heat of the Swiss valleys which ascends with them to almost their +highest level. When he said that the Saleve seemed close behind the +house, he was saying in other words that the sun beat back from, and the +air was intercepted by it. We see, nevertheless, in his description +of the surrounding scenery, a promise of the contemplative delight in +natural beauty to be henceforth so conspicuous in his experience, and +which seemed a new feature in it. He had hitherto approached every +living thing with curious and sympathetic observation--this hardly +requires saying of one who had animals for his first and always familiar +friends. Flowers also attracted him by their perfume. But what he loved +in nature was essentially its prefiguring of human existence, or +its echo of it; and it never appeared, in either his works or his +conversation, that he was much impressed by its inanimate forms--by even +those larger phenomena of mountain and cloud-land on which the latter +dwells. Such beauty as most appealed to him he had left behind with +the joys and sorrows of his Italian life, and it had almost inevitably +passed out of his consideration. During years of his residence in London +he never thought of the country as a source of pleasurable emotions, +other than those contingent on renewed health; and the places to which +he resorted had often not much beyond their health-giving qualities to +recommend them; his appetite for the beautiful had probably dwindled for +lack of food. But when a friend once said to him: 'You have not a great +love for nature, have you?' he had replied: 'Yes, I have, but I love +men and women better;' and the admission, which conveyed more than it +literally expressed, would have been true I believe at any, up to the +present, period of his history. Even now he did not cease to love men +and women best; but he found increasing enjoyment in the beauties of +nature, above all as they opened upon him on the southern slopes of the +Alps; and the delight of the aesthetic sense merged gradually in the +satisfied craving for pure air and brilliant sunshine which marked his +final struggle for physical life. A ring of enthusiasm comes into his +letters from the mountains, and deepens as the years advance; doubtless +enhanced by the great--perhaps too great--exhilaration which the Alpine +atmosphere produced, but also in large measure independent of it. Each +new place into which the summer carries him he declares more beautiful +than the last. It possibly was so. + +A touch of autumnal freshness had barely crept into the atmosphere of +the Saleve, when a moral thunderbolt fell on the little group of persons +domiciled at its base: Miss Egerton-Smith died, in what had seemed +for her unusually good health, in the act of preparing for a mountain +excursion with her friends--the words still almost on her lips in +which she had given some directions for their comfort. Mr. Browning's +impressionable nervous system was for a moment paralyzed by the shock. +It revived in all the emotional and intellectual impulses which gave +birth to 'La Saisiaz'. + +This poem contains, besides its personal reference and association, +elements of distinctive biographical interest. It is the author's +first--as also last--attempt to reconstruct his hope of immortality by +a rational process based entirely on the fundamental facts of his own +knowledge and consciousness--God and the human soul; and while the very +assumption of these facts, as basis for reasoning, places him at issue +with scientific thought, there is in his way of handling them a tribute +to the scientific spirit, perhaps foreshadowed in the beautiful epilogue +to 'Dramatis Personae', but of which there is no trace in his earlier +religious works. It is conclusive both in form and matter as to his +heterodox attitude towards Christianity. He was no less, in his way, a +Christian when he wrote 'La Saisiaz' than when he published 'A Death +in the Desert' and 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; or at any period +subsequent to that in which he accepted without questioning what he had +learned at his mother's knee. He has repeatedly written or declared in +the words of Charles Lamb:* 'If Christ entered the room I should fall +on my knees;' and again, in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander of +men, and _he_ was no man.' He has even added: 'If he had been, he would +have been an impostor.' But the arguments, in great part negative, set +forth in 'La Saisiaz' for the immortality of the soul, leave no place +for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the +subject. Christ remained for Mr. Browning a mystery and a message of +Divine Love, but no messenger of Divine intention towards mankind. + + * These words have more significance when taken with their + context. 'If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we + should all rise up to meet him; but if that Person [meaning + Christ] was to come into the room, we should all fall down + and try to kiss the hem of his garment.' + +The dialogue between Fancy and Reason is not only an admission of +uncertainty as to the future of the Soul: it is a plea for it; and as +such it gathers up into its few words of direct statement, threads of +reasoning which have been traceable throughout Mr. Browning's work. In +this plea for uncertainty lies also a full and frank acknowledgment of +the value of the earthly life; and as interpreted by his general views, +that value asserts itself, not only in the means of probation which +life affords, but in its existing conditions of happiness. No one, he +declares, possessing the certainty of a future state would patiently and +fully live out the present; and since the future can be only the ripened +fruit of the present, its promise would be neutralized, as well as +actual experience dwarfed, by a definite revelation. Nor, conversely, +need the want of a certified future depress the present spiritual and +moral life. It is in the nature of the Soul that it would suffer from +the promise. The existence of God is a justification for hope. And +since the certainty would be injurious to the Soul, hence destructive +to itself, the doubt--in other words, the hope--becomes a sufficient +approach to, a working substitute for it. It is pathetic to see how +in spite of the convictions thus rooted in Mr. Browning's mind, the +expressed craving for more knowledge, for more light, will now and then +escape him. + +Even orthodox Christianity gives no assurance of reunion to those whom +death has separated. It is obvious that Mr. Browning's poetic creed +could hold no conviction regarding it. He hoped for such reunion in +proportion as he wished. There must have been moments in his life when +the wish in its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. 'Prospice' appears +to prove this. But the wide range of imagination, no less than the lack +of knowledge, forbade in him any forecast of the possibilities of the +life to come. He believed that if granted, it would be an advance on the +present--an accession of knowledge if not an increase of happiness. He +was satisfied that whatever it gave, and whatever it withheld, it would +be good. In his normal condition this sufficed to him. + +'La Saisiaz' appeared in the early summer of 1878, and with it 'The +Two Poets of Croisic', which had been written immediately after it. The +various incidents of this poem are strictly historical; they lead the +way to a characteristic utterance of Mr. Browning's philosophy of life +to which I shall recur later. + +In 1872 Mr. Browning had published a first series of selections from his +works; it was to be followed by a second in 1880. In a preface to the +earlier volume, he indicates the plan which he has followed in the +choice and arrangement of poems; and some such intention runs also +through the second; since he declined a suggestion made to him for the +introduction or placing of a special poem, on the ground of its not +conforming to the end he had in view. It is difficult, in the one case +as in the other, to reconstruct the imagined personality to which his +preface refers; and his words on the later occasion pointed rather to +that idea of a chord of feeling which is raised by the correspondence of +the first and last poems of the respective groups. But either clue may +be followed with interest. + + + + +Chapter 18 + +1878-1884 + +He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--Venice--Favourite +Alpine Retreats--Mrs. Arthur Bronson--Life in Venice--A Tragedy at +Saint-Pierre--Mr. Cholmondeley--Mr. Browning's Patriotic +Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow--'Dramatic +Idyls'--'Jocoseria'--'Ferishtah's Fancies'. + + + +The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. +Browning's habits and experience. It impelled him finally to break with +the associations of the last seventeen autumns, which he remembered +more in their tedious or painful circumstances than in the unexciting +pleasure and renewed physical health which he had derived from them. He +was weary of the ever-recurring effort to uproot himself from his home +life, only to become stationary in some more or less uninteresting +northern spot. The always latent desire for Italy sprang up in him, +and with it the often present thought and wish to give his sister the +opportunity of seeing it. + +Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them both +too well; but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, though as +usual reluctantly, and not till the last moment, that they should move +southwards in the August of 1878. Their route lay over the Spluegen; and +having heard of a comfortable hotel near the summit of the Pass, they +agreed to remain there till the heat had sufficiently abated to allow +of the descent into Lombardy. The advantages of this first arrangement +exceeded their expectations. It gave them solitude without the sense +of loneliness. A little stream of travellers passed constantly over the +mountain, and they could shake hands with acquaintances at night, and +know them gone in the morning. They dined at the table d'hote, but took +all other meals alone, and slept in a detached wing or 'dependance' +of the hotel. Their daily walks sometimes carried them down to the Via +Mala; often to the top of the ascent, where they could rest, looking +down into Italy; and would even be prolonged over a period of five +hours and an extent of seventeen miles. Now, as always, the mountain air +stimulated Mr. Browning's physical energy; and on this occasion it also +especially quickened his imaginative powers. He was preparing the first +series of 'Dramatic Idylls'; and several of these, including 'Ivan +Ivanovitch', were produced with such rapidity that Miss Browning refused +to countenance a prolonged stay on the mountain, unless he worked at a +more reasonable rate. + +They did not linger on their way to Asolo and Venice, except for a +night's rest on the Lake of Como and two days at Verona. In their +successive journeys through Northern Italy they visited by degrees all +its notable cities, and it would be easy to recall, in order and detail, +most of these yearly expeditions. But the account of them would chiefly +resolve itself into a list of names and dates; for Mr. Browning had +seldom a new impression to receive, even from localities which he had +not seen before. I know that he and his sister were deeply struck by +the deserted grandeurs of Ravenna; and that it stirred in both of them +a memorable sensation to wander as they did for a whole day through the +pinewoods consecrated by Dante. I am nevertheless not sure that when +they performed the repeated round of picture-galleries and palaces, they +were not sometimes simply paying their debt to opportunity, and as much +for each other's sake as for their own. Where all was Italy, there +was little to gain or lose in one memorial of greatness, one object +of beauty, visited or left unseen. But in Asolo, even in Venice, Mr. +Browning was seeking something more: the remembrance of his own actual +and poetic youth. How far he found it in the former place we may infer +from a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald. + + +Sept. 28, 1878. + +And from 'Asolo', at last, dear friend! So can dreams come _false_.--S., +who has been writing at the opposite side of the table, has told you +about our journey and adventures, such as they were: but she cannot +tell you the feelings with which I revisit this--to me--memorable place +after above forty years' absence,--such things have begun and ended with +me in the interval! It was _too_ strange when we reached the ruined tower +on the hill-top yesterday, and I said 'Let me try if the echo still +exists which I discovered here,' (you can produce it from only _one_ +particular spot on a remainder of brickwork--) and thereupon it answered +me plainly as ever, after all the silence: for some children from the +adjoining 'podere', happening to be outside, heard my voice and its +result--and began trying to perform the feat--calling 'Yes, yes'--all in +vain: so, perhaps, the mighty secret will die with me! We shall probably +stay here a day or two longer,--the air is so pure, the country so +attractive: but we must go soon to Venice, stay our allotted time there, +and then go homeward: you will of course address letters to Venice, not +this place: it is a pleasure I promise myself that, on arriving I shall +certainly hear you speak in a letter which I count upon finding. + +The old inn here, to which I would fain have betaken myself, is +gone--levelled to the ground: I remember it was much damaged by a recent +earthquake, and the cracks and chasms may have threatened a downfall. +This Stella d'Oro is, however, much such an unperverted 'locanda' as its +predecessor--primitive indeed are the arrangements and unsophisticate +the ways: but there is cleanliness, abundance of goodwill, and the sweet +Italian smile at every mistake: we get on excellently. To be sure never +was such a perfect fellow-traveller, for my purposes, as S., so that +I have no subject of concern--if things suit me they suit her--and +vice-versa. I daresay she will have told you how we trudged together, +this morning to Possagno--through a lovely country: how we saw all the +wonders--and a wonder of detestability is the paint-performance of the +great man!--and how, on our return, we found the little town enjoying +high market day, and its privilege of roaring and screaming over a +bargain. It confuses me altogether,--but at Venice I may write more +comfortably. You will till then, Dear Friend, remember me ever as yours +affectionately, Robert Browning. + + +If the tone of this does not express disappointment, it has none of the +rapture which his last visit was to inspire. The charm which forty years +of remembrance had cast around the little city on the hill was dispelled +for, at all events, the time being. The hot weather and dust-covered +landscape, with the more than primitive accommodation of which he spoke +in a letter to another friend, may have contributed something to this +result. + +At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects. +A London acquaintance, who passed them on their way to Italy, had +recommended a cool and quiet hotel there, the Albergo dell' Universo. +The house, Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, was situated on the shady side of +the Grand Canal, just below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge. The +open stretches of the Giudecca lay not far behind; and a scrap of garden +and a clean and open little street made pleasant the approach from back +and side. It accommodated few persons in proportion to its size, and +fewer still took up their abode there; for it was managed by a lady of +good birth and fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been; and +her husband, a retired Austrian officer, and two grown-up daughters +did not lighten her task. Every year the fortunes sank lower; the upper +storey of the house was already falling into decay, and the fine old +furniture passing into the brokers' or private buyers' hands. It still, +however, afforded sufficiently comfortable, and, by reason of its very +drawbacks, desirable quarters to Mr. Browning. It perhaps turned the +scale in favour of his return to Venice; for the lady whose hospitality +he was to enjoy there was as yet unknown to him; and nothing would have +induced him to enter, with his eyes open, one of the English-haunted +hotels, in which acquaintance, old and new, would daily greet him in the +public rooms or jostle him in the corridors. + +He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight; their +programme did not this year include a longer stay; but it gave them time +to decide that no place could better suit them for an autumn holiday +than Venice, or better lend itself to a preparatory sojourn among the +Alps; and the plan of their next, and, though they did not know it, many +a following summer, was thus sketched out before the homeward journey +had begun. + +Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even while resting from it; if +indeed he did rest entirely on this occasion. He consulted a Russian +lady whom he met at the hotel, on the names he was introducing in +'Ivan Ivanovitch'. It would be interesting to know what suggestions or +corrections she made, and how far they adapted themselves to the rhythm +already established, or compelled changes in it; but the one alternative +would as little have troubled him as the other. Mrs. Browning told Mr. +Prinsep that her husband could never alter the wording of a poem without +rewriting it, indeed, practically converting it into another; though he +more than once tried to do so at her instigation. But to the end of his +life he could at any moment recast a line or passage for the sake of +greater correctness, and leave all that was essential in it untouched. + +Seven times more in the eleven years which remained to him, Mr. Browning +spent the autumn in Venice. Once also, in 1882, he had proceeded towards +it as far as Verona, when the floods which marked the autumn of that +year arrested his farther course. Each time he had halted first in some +more or less elevated spot, generally suggested by his French friend, +Monsieur Dourlans, himself an inveterate wanderer, whose inclinations +also tempted him off the beaten track. The places he most enjoyed were +Saint-Pierre la Chartreuse, and Gressoney Saint-Jean, where he stayed +respectively in 1881 and 1882, 1883 and 1885. Both of these had the +drawbacks, and what might easily have been the dangers, of remoteness +from the civilized world. But this weighed with him so little, that he +remained there in each case till the weather had broken, though there +was no sheltered conveyance in which he and his sister could travel +down; and on the later occasions at least, circumstances might easily +have combined to prevent their departure for an indefinite time. He +became, indeed, so attached to Gressoney, with its beautiful outlook +upon Monte Rosa, that nothing I believe would have hindered his +returning, or at least contemplating a return to it, but the great +fatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain, by a path which +made walking, wherever possible, the easier course. They did walk _down_ +it in the early October of 1885, and completed the hard seven hours' +trudge to San Martino d'Aosta, without an atom of refreshment or a +minute's rest. + +One of the great attractions of Saint-Pierre was the vicinity of the +Grande Chartreuse, to which Mr. Browning made frequent expeditions, +staying there through the night in order to hear the midnight mass. Miss +Browning also once attempted the visit, but was not allowed to enter the +monastery. She slept in the adjoining convent. + +The brother and sister were again at the Universo in 1879, 1880, and +1881; but the crash was rapidly approaching, and soon afterwards it +came. The old Palazzo passed into other hands, and after a short period +of private ownership was consigned to the purposes of an Art Gallery. + +In 1880, however, they had been introduced by Mrs. Story to an American +resident, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, and entered into most friendly +relations with her; and when, after a year's interval, they were again +contemplating an autumn in Venice, she placed at their disposal a suite +of rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, which formed a supplement +to her own house--making the offer with a kindly urgency which forbade +all thought of declining it. They inhabited these for a second time in +1885, keeping house for themselves in the simple but comfortable foreign +manner they both so well enjoyed, only dining and spending the evening +with their friend. But when, in 1888, they were going, as they thought, +to repeat the arrangement, they found, to their surprise, a little +apartment prepared for them under Mrs. Bronson's own roof. This act +of hospitality involved a special kindness on her part, of which Mr. +Browning only became aware at the close of a prolonged stay; and a sense +of increased gratitude added itself to the affectionate regard with +which his hostess had already inspired both his sister and him. So +far as he is concerned, the fact need only be indicated. It is fully +expressed in the preface to 'Asolando'. + +During the first and fresher period of Mr. Browning's visits to Venice, +he found a passing attraction in its society. It held an historical +element which harmonized well with the decayed magnificence of the city, +its old-world repose, and the comparatively simple modes of intercourse +still prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's 'salon' was hospitably open +whenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, and the +conservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, +preserved it from the heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreign +sociability so often assumes. Very interesting, even important names +lent their prestige to her circle; and those of Don Carlos and his +family, of Prince and Princess Iturbide, of Prince and Princess +Metternich, and of Princess Montenegro, were on the list of her +'habitues', and, in the case of the royal Spaniards, of her friends. It +need hardly be said that the great English poet, with his fast spreading +reputation and his infinite social charm, was kindly welcomed and warmly +appreciated amongst them. + +English and American acquaintances also congregated in Venice, or passed +through it from London, Florence, and Rome. Those resident in Italy +could make their visits coincide with those of Mr. Browning and his +sister, or undertake the journey for the sake of seeing them; while the +outward conditions of life were such as to render friendly intercourse +more satisfactory, and common social civilities less irksome than they +could be at home. Mr. Browning was, however, already too advanced in +years, too familiar with everything which the world can give, to be long +affected by the novelty of these experiences. It was inevitable that +the need of rest, though often for the moment forgotten, should assert +itself more and more. He gradually declined on the society of a small +number of resident or semi-resident friends; and, due exception being +made for the hospitalities of his temporary home, became indebted to the +kindness of Sir Henry and Lady Layard, of Mr. and Mrs. Curtis of Palazzo +Barbaro, and of Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Eden, for most of the social +pleasure and comfort of his later residences in Venice. + +Part of a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald gives an insight into the character +of his life there: all the stronger that it was written under a +temporary depression which it partly serves to explain. + + +Albergo dell' Universo, Venezia, Italia: Sept. 24, '81. + +'Dear Friend,--On arriving here I found your letter to my great +satisfaction--and yesterday brought the 'Saturday Review'--for which, +many thanks. + +'We left our strange but lovely place on the 18th, reaching Chambery at +evening,--stayed the next day there,--walking, among other diversions +to "Les Charmettes", the famous abode of Rousseau--kept much as when he +left it: I visited it with my wife perhaps twenty-five years ago, and +played so much of "Rousseau's Dream" as could be effected on his antique +harpsichord: this time I attempted the same feat, but only two notes or +thereabouts out of the octave would answer the touch. Next morning we +proceeded to Turin, and on Wednesday got here, in the middle of the +last night of the Congress Carnival--rowing up the Canal to our Albergo +through a dazzling blaze of lights and throng of boats,--there being, if +we are told truly, 50,000 strangers in the city. Rooms had been +secured for us, however: and the festivities are at an end, to my great +joy,--for Venice is resuming its old quiet aspect--the only one I value +at all. Our American friends wanted to take us in their gondola to see +the principal illuminations _after_ the "Serenade", which was not +over before midnight--but I was contented with _that_--being tired and +indisposed for talking, and, having seen and heard quite enough from +our own balcony, went to bed: S. having betaken her to her own room long +before. + +'Next day we took stock of our acquaintances,--found that the Storys, +on whom we had counted for company, were at Vallombrosa, though the +two sons have a studio here--other friends are in sufficient number +however--and last evening we began our visits by a very classical +one--to the Countess Mocenigo, in her palace which Byron occupied: she +is a charming widow since two years,--young, pretty and of the prettiest +manners: she showed us all the rooms Byron had lived in,--and I wrote +my name in her album _on_ the desk himself wrote the last canto of 'Ch. +Harold' and 'Beppo' upon. There was a small party: we were taken +and introduced by the Layards who are kind as ever, and I met old +friends--Lord Aberdare, Charles Bowen, and others. While I write comes +a deliciously fresh 'bouquet' from Mrs. Bronson, an American lady,--in +short we shall find a week or two amusing enough; though--where are the +pinewoods, mountains and torrents, and wonderful air? Venice is under +a cloud,--dull and threatening,--though we were apprehensive of heat, +arriving, as we did, ten days earlier than last year. . . .' + + +The evening's programme was occasionally varied by a visit to one of +the theatres. The plays given were chiefly in the Venetian dialect, and +needed previous study for their enjoyment; but Mr. Browning assisted at +one musical performance which strongly appealed to his historical and +artistic sensibilities: that of the 'Barbiere' of Paisiello in the +Rossini theatre and in the presence of Wagner, which took place in the +autumn of 1880. + +Although the manner of his sojourn in the Italian city placed all the +resources of resident life at his command, Mr. Browning never abjured +the active habits of the English traveller. He daily walked with his +sister, as he did in the mountains, for walking's sake, as well as for +the delight of what his expeditions showed him; and the facilities which +they supplied for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mind +one of the great merits of his autumn residences in Italy. He explored +Venice in all directions, and learned to know its many points of beauty +and interest, as those cannot who believe it is only to be seen from +a gondola; and when he had visited its every corner, he fell back on +a favourite stroll along the Riva to the public garden and back again; +never failing to leave the house at about the same hour of the day. +Later still, when a friend's gondola was always at hand, and air and +sunshine were the one thing needful, he would be carried to the Lido, +and take a long stretch on its farther shore. + +The letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, from which I have already quoted, +concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place at +Saint-Pierre just before his departure, and in which Mr. Browning's +intuitions had played a striking part. + + +'And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence? +Our journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of the one mule +of the village being requisitioned by the 'Juge d'Instruction' from +Grenoble, come to enquire into a murder committed two days before. +My sister and I used once a day to walk for a couple of hours up a +mountain-road of the most lovely description, and stop at the +summit whence we looked down upon the minute hamlet of St.-Pierre +d'Entremont,--even more secluded than our own: then we got back to our +own aforesaid. And in this Paradisial place, they found, yesterday week, +a murdered man--frightfully mutilated--who had been caught apparently in +the act of stealing potatoes in a field: such a crime had never occurred +in the memory of the oldest of our folk. Who was the murderer is the +mystery--whether the field's owner--in his irritation at discovering +the robber,--or one of a band of similar 'charbonniers' (for they +suppose the man to be a Piedmontese of that occupation) remains to +be proved: they began by imprisoning the owner, who denies his guilt +energetically. Now the odd thing is, that, either the day of, or after +the murder,--as I and S. were looking at the utter solitude, I had the +fancy "What should I do if I suddenly came upon a dead body in this +field? Go and proclaim it--and subject myself to all the vexations +inflicted by the French way of procedure (which begins by assuming +that you may be the criminal)--or neglect an obvious duty, and return +silently." I, of course, saw that the former was the only proper course, +whatever the annoyance involved. And, all the while, there was just +about to be the very same incident for the trouble of somebody.' + + +Here the account breaks off; but writing again from the same place, +August 16, 1882, he takes up the suspended narrative with this question: + +'Did I tell you of what happened to me on the last day of my stay here +last year?' And after repeating the main facts continues as follows: + + +'This morning, in the course of my walk, I entered into conversation +with two persons of whom I made enquiry myself. They said the accused +man, a simple person, had been locked up in a high chamber,--protesting +his innocence strongly,--and troubled in his mind by the affair +altogether and the turn it was taking, had profited by the gendarme's +negligence, and thrown himself out of the window--and so died, +continuing to the last to protest as before. My presentiment of what +such a person might have to undergo was justified you see--though +I should not in any case have taken _that_ way of getting out of the +difficulty. The man added, "it was not he who committed the murder, but +the companions of the man, an Italian charcoal-burner, who owed him a +grudge, killed him, and dragged him to the field--filling his sack with +potatoes as if stolen, to give a likelihood that the field's owner had +caught him stealing and killed him,--so M. Perrier the greffier told +me." Enough of this grim story. + +. . . . . + +'My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found: "Vouz +savez la croix au sommet de la colline? A cette distance de cela!" That +is precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me.' + + +A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3 clearly refers to +some comment of Mrs. Fitz-Gerald's on the peculiar nature of this +presentiment: + + +'No--I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing +that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of +ideas--_contraries_ come into the mind as often as _similarities_--and the +peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jar +with them. I have often thought of the trouble that might have befallen +me if poor Miss Smith's death had happened the night before, when we +were on the mountain alone together--or next morning when we were on the +proposed excursion--only _then_ we should have had companions.' + + +The letter then passes to other subjects. + + +'This is the fifth magnificent day--like magnificence, unfit for turning +to much account--for we cannot walk till sunset. I had two hours' walk, +or nearly, before breakfast, however: It is the loveliest country I ever +had experience of, and we shall prolong our stay perhaps--apart from +the concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be glad +to apprehend no long journey--besides the annoyance of having to pass +Florence and Rome unvisited, for S.'s sake, I mean: even Naples would +have been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability. + +'Your "Academy" came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electric +eel, as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about the +Archbishop who has always been strangely kind to me.' + + +He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of +October with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the party +assembled there was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley's +guests, a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of +a dangerous mountain without a guide, and who lost her life in the +experiment. + +A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show that +even in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning's patriotism did not go to +sleep. There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendship +did not; but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that they +should be largely absorbed by politics, though he followed the course of +his country's history as a necessary part of his own life. It needed +a crisis like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irish +struggle, to arouse him to a full emotional participation in current +events. How deeply he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen. + + +'If the George Smiths are still with you, give them my love, and tell +them we shall expect to see them at Venice,--which was not so likely +to be the case when we were bound for Ischia. As for Lady Wolseley--one +dares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now; but my own pulses +beat pretty strongly when I open the day's newspaper--which, by some new +arrangement, reaches us, oftener than not, on the day after publication. +Where is your Bertie? I had an impassioned letter, a fortnight ago, +from a nephew of mine, who is in the second division [battalion?] of +the Black Watch; he was ordered to Edinburgh, and the regiment not +dispatched, after all,--it having just returned from India; the poor +fellow wrote in his despair "to know if I could do anything!" He may be +wanted yet: though nothing seems wanted in Egypt, so capital appears to +be the management.' + + +In 1879 Mr. Browning published the first series of his 'Dramatic Idyls'; +and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration through +the public mind. In 'La Saisiaz' and the accompanying poems he had +accomplished what was virtually a life's work. For he was approaching +the appointed limit of man's existence; and the poetic, which had been +nourished in him by the natural life--which had once outstripped its +developments, but on the whole remained subject to them--had therefore, +also, passed through the successive phases of individual growth. He had +been inspired as dramatic poet by the one avowed conviction that little +else is worth study but the history of a soul; and outward act or +circumstance had only entered into his creations as condition or +incident of the given psychological state. His dramatic imagination +had first, however unconsciously, sought its materials in himself; then +gradually been projected into the world of men and women, which his +widening knowledge laid open to him; it is scarcely necessary to say +that its power was only fully revealed when it left the remote regions +of poetical and metaphysical self-consciousness, to invoke the not less +mysterious and far more searching utterance of the general human heart. +It was a matter of course that in this expression of his dramatic +genius, the intellectual and emotional should exhibit the varying +relations which are developed by the natural life: that feeling should +begin by doing the work of thought, as in 'Saul', and thought end by +doing the work of feeling, as in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and that the two +should alternate or combine in proportioned intensity in such works of +an intermediate period as 'Cleon', 'A Death in the Desert', the 'Epistle +of Karshish', and 'James Lee's Wife'; the sophistical ingenuities of +'Bishop Blougram', and 'Sludge'; and the sad, appealing tenderness of +'Andrea del Sarto' and 'The Worst of It'. + +It was also almost inevitable that so vigorous a genius should sometimes +falsify calculations based on the normal life. The long-continued +force and freshness of Mr. Browning's general faculties was in itself +a protest against them. We saw without surprise that during the decade +which produced 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau', 'Fifine at the Fair', and +'Red Cotton Nightcap Country', he could give us 'The Inn Album', with +its expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, rarely equalled, +in the whole range of his work: or those two unique creations of airy +fancy and passionate symbolic romance, 'Saint Martin's Summer', and +'Numpholeptos'. It was no ground for astonishment that the creative +power in him should even ignore the usual period of decline, and defy, +so far as is humanly possible, its natural laws of modification. But in +the 'Dramatic Idyls' he did more than proceed with unflagging powers on +a long-trodden, distinctive course; he took a new departure. + +Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined and +worked out his new group of poems; he presented it in a no less +subtle and complex form. But he gave it the added force of picturesque +realization; and this by means of incidents both powerful in themselves, +and especially suited for its development. It was only in proportion to +this higher suggestiveness that a startling situation ever seemed to +him fit subject for poetry. Where its interest and excitement exhausted +themselves in the external facts, it became, he thought, the property +of the chronicler, but supplied no material for the poet; and he often +declined matter which had been offered him for dramatic treatment +because it belonged to the more sensational category. + +It is part of the vital quality of the 'Dramatic Idyls' that, in them, +the act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other. +We see the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimly +striving to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this that +the psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such at +least is the case in 'Martin Relph', and the idealized Russian legend, +'Ivan Ivanovitch'. The grotesque tragedy of 'Ned Bratts' has also its +marked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader +kind. + +The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of +'Idyls', 1880, and 'Jocoseria', 1883. In 'Ferishtah's Fancies', 1884, +Mr. Browning returned to his original manner, though carrying into it +something of the renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change. +The lyrics which alternate with its parables include some of the most +tender, most impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems. + +The moral and religious opinions conveyed in this later volume may be +accepted without reserve as Mr. Browning's own, if we subtract from them +the exaggerations of the figurative and dramatic form. It is indeed +easy to recognize in them the under currents of his whole real and +imaginative life. They have also on one or two points an intrinsic value +which will justify a later allusion. + + + + +Chapter 19 + +1881-1887 + +The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey--His Attitude +towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia +Thaxter--Letter to Miss Hickey; 'Strafford'--Shakspere and Wordsworth +Societies--Letters to Professor Knight--Appreciation in Italy; +Professor Nencioni--The Goldoni Sonnet--Mr. Barrett Browning; +Palazzo Manzoni--Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow--Mrs. Bloomfield +Moore--Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin--Loss of old +Friends--Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy--'Parleyings with +certain People of Importance in their Day'. + + + +This Indian summer of Mr. Browning's genius coincided with the highest +manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, any +living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society +bearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. The idea arose +almost simultaneously in the mind of Dr., then Mr. Furnivall, and of +Miss E. H. Hickey. One day, in the July of 1881, as they were on their +way to Warwick Crescent to pay an appointed visit there, Miss Hickey +strongly expressed her opinion of the power and breadth of Mr. +Browning's work; and concluded by saying that much as she loved +Shakespeare, she found in certain aspects of Browning what even +Shakespeare could not give her. Mr. Furnivall replied to this by asking +what she would say to helping him to found a Browning Society; and it +then appeared that Miss Hickey had recently written to him a letter, +suggesting that he should found one; but that it had miscarried, or, as +she was disposed to think, not been posted. Being thus, at all events, +agreed as to the fitness of the undertaking, they immediately spoke of +it to Mr. Browning, who at first treated the project as a joke; but did +not oppose it when once he understood it to be serious. His only proviso +was that he should remain neutral in respect to its fulfilment. He +refused even to give Mr. Furnivall the name or address of any friends, +whose interest in himself or his work might render their co-operation +probable. + +This passive assent sufficed. A printed prospectus was now issued. About +two hundred members were soon secured. A committee was elected, of which +Mr. J. T. Nettleship, already well known as a Browning student, was +one of the most conspicuous members; and by the end of October a small +Society had come into existence, which held its inaugural meeting in +the Botanic Theatre of University College. Mr. Furnivall, its principal +founder, and responsible organizer, was Chairman of the Committee, and +Miss E. H. Hickey, the co-founder, was Honorary Secretary. When, two or +three years afterwards, illness compelled her to resign this position, +it was assumed by Mr. J. Dykes Campbell. + +Although nothing could be more unpretending than the action of this +Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did +not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation +of a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a +precedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his +work, or, as some one termed it, for making a man a classic during his +lifetime. But this fact was not yet generally known; and meanwhile a +curious contradiction developed itself in the public mind. The outer +world of Mr. Browning's acquaintance continued to condemn the too great +honour which was being done to him; from those of the inner circle he +constantly received condolences on being made the subject of proceedings +which, according to them, he must somehow regard as an offence. + +This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. At +the beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions of the +Society. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings as to its +future. He could not be sure that its action would always be judicious, +still less that it would be always successful. He was prepared for its +being laughed at, and for himself being included in the laughter. +He consented to its establishment for what seemed to him the one +unanswerable reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, no just +cause for forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn between +the kind of publicity which every writer seeks, which, for good or +evil, he had already obtained, and that which the Browning Society was +conferring on him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed, +and discussed 'viva voce' and in print. That these proceedings would +now take place in other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, through +other organs than newspapers or magazines, by other and larger groups +of persons than those usually gathered round a dinner-or a tea-table, +involved no real change in the situation. In any case, he had made +himself public property; and those who thus organized their study of him +were exercising an individual right. If his own rights had been assailed +he would have guarded them also; but the circumstances of the case +precluded such a contingency. And he had his reward. How he felt towards +the Society at the close of its first session is better indicated in the +following letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald than in the note to Mr. Yates which +Mr. Sharp has published, and which was written with more reserve and, I +believe, at a rather earlier date. Even the shade of condescension which +lingers about his words will have been effaced by subsequent experience; +and many letters written to Dr. Furnivall must, since then, have +attested his grateful and affectionate appreciation of kindness intended +and service done to him. + + +. . . They always treat me gently in 'Punch'--why don't you do the +same by the Browning Society? I see you emphasize Miss Hickey's +acknowledgement of defects in time and want of rehearsal: but I look +for no great perfection in a number of kindly disposed strangers to +me personally, who try to interest people in my poems by singing and +reading them. They give their time for nothing, offer their little +entertainment for nothing, and certainly get next to nothing in the way +of thanks--unless from myself who feel grateful to the faces I shall +never see, the voices I shall never hear. The kindest notices I have +had, or at all events those that have given me most pleasure, have been +educed by this Society--A. Sidgwick's paper, that of Professor Corson, +Miss Lewis' article in this month's 'Macmillan'--and I feel grateful for +it all, for my part,--and none the less for a little amusement at the +wonder of some of my friends that I do not jump up and denounce the +practices which must annoy me so much. Oh! my 'gentle Shakespeare', how +well you felt and said--'never anything can be amiss when simpleness and +duty tender it.' So, dear Lady, here is my duty and simplicity tendering +itself to you, with all affection besides, and I being ever yours, R. +Browning. + + +That general disposition of the London world which left the ranks of the +little Society to be three-fourths recruited among persons, many living +at a distance, whom the poet did not know, became also in its way +a satisfaction. It was with him a matter of course, though never of +indifference, that his closer friends of both sexes were among its +members; it was one of real gratification that they included from +the beginning such men as Dean Boyle of Salisbury, the Rev. Llewellyn +Davies, George Meredith, and James Cotter Morison--that they enjoyed the +sympathy and co-operation of such a one as Archdeacon Farrar. But he had +an ingenuous pride in reading the large remainder of the Society's lists +of names, and pointing out the fact that there was not one among them +which he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, 'All these people +care for me as a poet. No social interest, no personal prepossession, +has attracted them to my work.' And when the unknown name was not only +appended to a list; when it formed the signature of a paper--excellent +or indifferent as might be--but in either case bearing witness to +a careful and unobtrusive study of his poems, by so much was the +gratification increased. He seldom weighed the intrinsic merit of such +productions; he did not read them critically. No man was ever more +adverse to the seeming ungraciousness of analyzing the quality of a +gift. In real life indeed this power of gratitude sometimes defeated its +own end, by neutralizing his insight into the motive or effort involved +in different acts of kindness, and placing them all successively on the +same plane. + +In the present case, however, an ungraduated acceptance of the labour +bestowed on him was part of the neutral attitude which it was his +constant endeavour to maintain. He always refrained from noticing any +erroneous statement concerning himself or his works which might appear +in the Papers of the Society: since, as he alleged, if he once began to +correct, he would appear to endorse whatever he left uncorrected, and +thus make himself responsible, not only for any interpretation that +might be placed on his poems, but, what was far more serious, for +every eulogium that was bestowed upon them. He could not stand aloof as +entirely as he or even his friends desired, since it was usual with some +members of the Society to seek from him elucidations of obscure passages +which, without these, it was declared, would be a stumbling-block to +future readers. But he disliked being even to this extent drawn into +its operation; and his help was, I believe, less and less frequently +invoked. Nothing could be more false than the rumour which once arose +that he superintended those performances of his plays which took place +under the direction of the Society. Once only, and by the urgent desire +of some of the actors, did he witness a last rehearsal of one of them. + +It was also a matter of course that men and women brought together by +a pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning's work should often ignore its +authorized explanations, and should read and discuss it in the light of +personal impressions more congenial to their own mind; and the various +and circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem did not +serve to render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry lies +so largely in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions of +it have their positive value and also their relative truth; and the +intellectual friction which was thus created, not only in the parent +society, but in its offshoots in England and America, was not their +least important result. + +These Societies conferred, it need hardly be said, no less real benefits +on the public at large. They extended the sale of Mr. Browning's works, +and with it their distinct influence for intellectual and moral good. +They not only created in many minds an interest in these works, but +aroused the interest where it was latent, and gave it expression where +it had hitherto found no voice. One fault, alone, could be charged +against them; and this lay partly in the nature of all friendly +concerted action: they stirred a spirit of enthusiasm in which it +was not easy, under conditions equally genuine, to distinguish the +individual element from that which was due to contagion; while the +presence among us of the still living poet often infused into that +enthusiasm a vaguely emotional element, which otherwise detracted from +its intellectual worth. But in so far as this was a drawback to the +intended action of the Societies, it was one only in the most negative +sense; nor can we doubt, that, to a certain extent, Mr. Browning's best +influence was promoted by it. The hysterical sensibilities which, for +some years past, he had unconsciously but not unfrequently aroused in +the minds of women, and even of men, were a morbid development of that +influence, which its open and systematic extension tended rather to +diminish than to increase. + +It is also a matter of history that Robert Browning had many deep and +constant admirers in England, and still more in America,* long before +this organized interest had developed itself. Letters received from +often remote parts of the United States had been for many years a detail +of his daily experience; and even when they consisted of the request for +an autograph, an application to print selections from his works, or a +mere expression of schoolboy pertness or schoolgirl sentimentality, they +bore witness to his wide reputation in that country, and the high esteem +in which he was held there.** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter of +Boston had long, I believe, been conspicuous in the higher ranks of his +disciples, though they first occur in his correspondence at about +this date. I trust I may take for granted Mrs. Thaxter's permission to +publish a letter from her. + + * The cheapening of his works in America, induced by the + absence of international copyright, accounts of course in + some degree for their wider diffusion, and hence earlier + appreciation there. + + ** One of the most curious proofs of this was the + Californian Railway time-table edition of his poems. + + +Newtonville, Massachusetts: March 14, 1880. + +My dear Mr. Browning: + +Your note reached me this morning, but it belonged to my husband, for it +was he who wrote to you; so I gave it to him, glad to put into his hands +so precious a piece of manuscript, for he has for you and all your work +an enthusiastic appreciation such as is seldom found on this planet: it +is not possible that the admiration of one mortal for another can exceed +his feeling for you. You might have written for him, + + I've a friend over the sea, + . . . . + + It all grew out of the books I write, &c. + +You should see his fine wrath and scorn for the idiocy that doesn't at +once comprehend you! + +He knows every word you have ever written; long ago 'Sordello' was +an open book to him from title-page to closing line, and _all_ you have +printed since has been as eagerly and studiously devoured. He reads you +aloud (and his reading is a fine art) to crowds of astonished people, +he swears by you, he thinks no one save Shakspere has a right to be +mentioned in the same century with you. You are the great enthusiasm of +his life. + +Pardon me, you are smiling, I dare say. You hear any amount of such +things, doubtless. But a genuine living appreciation is always worth +having in this old world, it is like a strong fresh breeze from off the +brine, that puts a sense of life and power into a man. You cannot be the +worse for it. Yours very sincerely, Celia Thaxter. + + +When Mr. Thaxter died, in February 1885, his son wrote to Mr. Browning +to beg of him a few lines to be inscribed on his father's tombstone. The +little poem by which the request was answered has not yet, I believe, +been published. + + +'Written to be inscribed on the gravestone of Levi Thaxter.' + +Thou, whom these eyes saw never,--say friends true Who say my soul, +helped onward by my song, Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too? +I gave but of the little that I knew: How were the gift requited, while +along Life's path I pace, could'st thou make weakness strong, Help me +with knowledge--for Life's old, Death's new! R. B. April 19, '85. + + +A publication which connected itself with the labours of the Society, +without being directly inspired by it, was the annotated 'Strafford' +prepared by Miss Hickey for the use of students. It may be agreeable to +those who use the little work to know the estimate in which Mr. Browning +held it. He wrote as follows: + + +19, Warwick Crescent, W.: February 15, 1884. + +Dear Miss Hickey,--I have returned the Proofs by post,--nothing can be +better than your notes--and with a real wish to be of use, I read +them carefully that I might detect never so tiny a fault,--but I found +none--unless (to show you how minutely I searched,) it should be one +that by 'thriving in your contempt,' I meant simply 'while you despise +them, and for all that, they thrive and are powerful to do you harm.' +The idiom you prefer--quite an authorized one--comes to much the same +thing after all. + +You must know how much I grieve at your illness--temporary as I will +trust it to be--I feel all your goodness to me--or whatever in my books +may be taken for me--well, I wish you knew how thoroughly I feel it--and +how truly I am and shall ever be Yours affectionately, Robert Browning. + + +From the time of the foundation of the New Shakspere Society, Mr. +Browning was its president. In 1880 he became a member of the Wordsworth +Society. Two interesting letters to Professor Knight, dated respectively +1880 and 1887, connect themselves with the working of the latter; and, +in spite of their distance in time, may therefore be given together. +The poem which formed the subject of the first was 'The Daisy';* the +selection referred to in the second was that made in 1888 by Professor +Knight for the Wordsworth Society, with the co-operation of Mr. Browning +and other eminent literary men. + + * That beginning 'In youth from rock to rock, I went.' + + +19, Warwick Crescent, W.: July 9, '80. + +My dear Sir,--You pay me a compliment in caring for my opinion--but, +such as it is, a very decided one it must be. On every account, your +method of giving the original text, and subjoining in a note the +variations, each with its proper date, is incontestably preferable +to any other. It would be so, if the variations were even +improvements--there would be pleasure as well as profit in seeing what +was good grow visibly better. But--to confine ourselves to the single +'proof' you have sent me--in every case the change is sadly for the +worse: I am quite troubled by such spoilings of passage after passage +as I should have chuckled at had I chanced upon them in some copy +pencil-marked with corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed, they are +nearly as wretched as the touchings-up of the 'Siege of Corinth' by the +latter. If ever diabolic agency was caught at tricks with 'apostolic' +achievement (see page 9)--and 'apostolic', with no 'profanity' at all, I +esteem these poems to be--surely you may bid it 'aroint' 'about and all +about' these desecrated stanzas--each of which, however, thanks to your +piety, we may hail, I trust, with a hearty + + Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain + Nor be less dear to future men + Than in old time! + +Believe me, my dear Sir, Yours very sincerely, Robert Browning. + + + +19, Warwick Crescent, W.: March 23, '87. + +Dear Professor Knight,--I have seemed to neglect your commission +shamefully enough: but I confess to a sort of repugnance to classifying +the poems as even good and less good: because in my heart I fear I +should do it almost chronologically--so immeasureably superior seem to +me the 'first sprightly runnings'. Your selection would appear to be +excellent; and the partial admittance of the later work prevents one +from observing the too definitely distinguishing black line between +supremely good and--well, what is fairly tolerable--from Wordsworth, +always understand! I have marked a few of the early poems, not included +in your list--I could do no other when my conscience tells me that I +never can be tired of loving them: while, with the best will in the +world, I could never do more than try hard to like them.* + + * By 'them' Mr. Browning clearly means the later poems, and + probably has omitted a few words which would have shown + this. + +You see, I go wholly upon my individual likings and distastes: that +other considerations should have their weight with other people is +natural and inevitable. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. + +Many thanks for the volume just received--that with the correspondence. +I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut away from +'Dion'. + + +In 1884 he was again invited, and again declined, to stand for the +Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews. In the same year he +received the LL.D. degree of the University of Edinburgh; and in the +following was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of +that city.* During the few days spent there on the occasion of his +investiture, he was the guest of Professor Masson, whose solicitous +kindness to him is still warmly remembered in the family. + + * This Association was instituted in 1833, and is a union of + literary and debating societies. It is at present composed + of five: the Dialectic, Scots Law, Diagnostic, + Philosophical, and Philomathic. + +The interest in Mr. Browning as a poet is beginning to spread in +Germany. There is room for wonder that it should not have done so +before, though the affinities of his genius are rather with the older +than with the more modern German mind. It is much more remarkable that, +many years ago, his work had already a sympathetic exponent in Italy. +Signor Nencioni, Professor of Literature in Florence, had made his +acquaintance at Siena, and was possibly first attracted to him through +his wife, although I never heard that it was so. He was soon, however, +fascinated by Mr. Browning's poetry, and made it an object of serious +study; he largely quoted from, and wrote on it, in the Roman paper +'Fanfulla della Domenica', in 1881 and 1882; and published last winter +what is, I am told, an excellent article on the same subject, in the +'Nuova Antologia'. Two years ago he travelled from Rome to Venice +(accompanied by Signor Placci), for the purpose of seeing him. He is +fond of reciting passages from the works, and has even made attempts at +translation: though he understands them too well not to pronounce them, +what they are for every Latin language, untranslatable. + +In 1883 Mr. Browning added another link to the 'golden' chain of verse +which united England and Italy. A statue of Goldoni was about to be +erected in Venice. The ceremonies of the occasion were to include the +appearance of a volume--or album--of appropriate poems; and Cavaliere +Molmenti, its intending editor, a leading member of the 'Erection +Committee', begged Mr. Browning to contribute to it. It was also desired +that he should be present at the unveiling.* He was unable to grant +this request, but consented to write a poem. This sonnet to Goldoni also +deserves to be more widely known, both for itself and for the manner of +its production. Mr. Browning had forgotten, or not understood, how +soon the promise concerning it must be fulfilled, and it was actually +scribbled off while a messenger, sent by Signor Molmenti, waited for it. + + * It was, I think, during this visit to Venice that he + assisted at a no less interesting ceremony: the unveiling + of a commemorative tablet to Baldassaro Galuppi, in his + native island of Burano. + + +Goldoni,--good, gay, sunniest of souls,--Glassing half Venice in that +verse of thine,--What though it just reflect the shade and shine Of +common life, nor render, as it rolls Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for +thy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to +that opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. There +throng the people: how they come and go Lisp the soft language, flaunt +the bright garb,--see,--On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge! +Dear king of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so, +Venice, and we who love her, all love thee! + +Venice, Nov. 27, 1883. + + +A complete bibliography would take account of three other sonnets, +'The Founder of the Feast', 1884, 'The Names', 1884, and 'Why I am a +Liberal', 1886, to which I shall have occasion to refer; but we +decline insensibly from these on to the less important or more +fugitive productions which such lists also include, and on which it is +unnecessary or undesirable that any stress should be laid. + +In 1885 he was joined in Venice by his son. It was 'Penini's' first +return to the country of his birth, his first experience of the city +which he had only visited in his nurse's arms; and his delight in it was +so great that the plan shaped itself in his father's mind of buying a +house there, which should serve as 'pied-a-terre' for the family, but +more especially as a home for him. Neither the health nor the energies +of the younger Mr. Browning had ever withstood the influence of the +London climate; a foreign element was undoubtedly present in his +otherwise thoroughly English constitution. Everything now pointed to his +settling in Italy, and pursuing his artist life there, only interrupting +it by occasional visits to London and Paris. His father entered into +negotiations for the Palazzo Manzoni, next door to the former Hotel de +l'Univers; and the purchase was completed, so far as he was concerned, +before he returned to England. The fact is related, and his own position +towards it described in a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow, written from +Venice. + + +Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, S. Moise: Nov. 15, '85. + +My two dear friends will have supposed, with plenty of reason, that I +never got the kind letter some weeks ago. When it came, I was in the +middle of an affair, conducted by letters of quite another kind, with +people abroad: and as I fancied that every next day might bring me +news very interesting to me and likely to be worth telling to the dear +friends, I waited and waited--and only two days since did the matter +come to a satisfactory conclusion--so, as the Irish song has it, 'Open +your eyes and die with surprise' when I inform you that I have purchased +the Manzoni Palace here, on the Canal Grande, of its owner, Marchese +Montecucculi, an Austrian and an absentee--hence the delay of +communication. I did this purely for Pen--who became at once simply +infatuated with the city which won my whole heart long before he was +born or thought of. I secure him a perfect domicile, every facility for +his painting and sculpture, and a property fairly worth, even here and +now, double what I gave for it--such is the virtue in these parts of +ready money! I myself shall stick to London--which has been so eminently +good and gracious to me--so long as God permits; only, when the +inevitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body--(I shall not +believe in his reaching my soul and proper self)--there will be a +capital retreat provided: and meantime I shall be able to 'take mine +ease in mine own inn' whenever so minded. There, my dear friends! I +trust now to be able to leave very shortly; the main business cannot be +formally concluded before two months at least--through the absence of +the Marchese,--who left at once to return to his duties as commander +of an Austrian ship; but the necessary engagement to sell and buy at a +specified price is made in due legal form, and the papers will be sent +to me in London for signature. I hope to get away the week after next at +latest,--spite of the weather in England which to-day's letters report +as 'atrocious',--and ours, though variable, is in the main very +tolerable and sometimes perfect; for all that, I yearn to be at home in +poor Warwick Crescent, which must do its best to make me forget my new +abode. I forget you don't know Venice. Well then, the Palazzo Manzoni +is situate on the Grand Canal, and is described by Ruskin,--to give +no other authority,--as 'a perfect and very rich example of Byzantine +Renaissance: its warm yellow marbles are magnificent.' And again--'an +exquisite example (of Byzantine Renaissance) as applied to domestic +architecture.' So testify the 'Stones of Venice'. But we will talk about +the place, over a photograph, when I am happy enough to be with you +again. + +Of Venetian gossip there is next to none. We had an admirable Venetian +Company,--using the dialect,--at the Goldoni Theatre. The acting +of Zago, in his various parts, and Zenon-Palladini, in her especial +character of a Venetian piece of volubility and impulsiveness in the +shape of a servant, were admirable indeed. The manager, Gallina, is a +playwright of much reputation, and gave us some dozen of his own pieces, +mostly good and clever. S. is very well,--much improved in health: we +walk sufficiently in this city where walking is accounted impossible by +those who never attempt it. Have I tired your good temper? No! you ever +wished me well, and I love you both with my whole heart. S.'s love goes +with mine--who am ever yours Robert Browning. + + +He never, however, owned the Manzoni Palace. The Austrian gentlemen* +whose property it was, put forward, at the last moment, unexpected and +to his mind unreasonable claims; and he was preparing to contest +the position, when a timely warning induced him to withdraw from it +altogether. The warning proceeded from his son, who had remained on the +spot, and was now informed on competent authority that the foundations +of the house were insecure. + + * Two or three brothers. + +In the early summer of 1884, and again in 1886, Miss Browning had a +serious illness; and though she recovered, in each case completely, and +in the first rapidly, it was considered desirable that she should not +travel so far as usual from home. She and her brother therefore accepted +for the August and September of 1884 the urgent invitation of an +American friend, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, to stay with her at a villa +which she rented for some seasons at St. Moritz. Mr. Browning was +delighted with the Engadine, where the circumstances of his abode, +and the thoughtful kindness of his hostess, allowed him to enjoy the +benefits of comparative civilization together with almost perfect +repose. The weather that year was brilliant until the end of September, +if not beyond it; and his letters tell the old pleasant story of long +daily walks and a general sense of invigoration. One of these, +written to Mr. and Mrs. Skirrow, also contains some pungent remarks on +contemporary events, with an affectionate allusion to one of the chief +actors in them. + + +'Anyhow, I have the sincerest hope that Wolseley may get done as +soon, and kill as few people, as possible,--keeping himself safe and +sound--brave dear fellow--for the benefit of us all.' + + +He also speaks with great sympathy of the death of Mr. Charles Sartoris, +which had just taken place at St.-Moritz. + +In 1886, Miss Browning was not allowed to leave England; and she and +Mr. Browning established themselves for the autumn at the Hand Hotel at +Llangollen, where their old friends, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, would +be within easy reach. Mr. Browning missed the exhilarating effects of +the Alpine air; but he enjoyed the peaceful beauty of the Welsh valley, +and the quiet and comfort of the old-fashioned English inn. A new source +of interest also presented itself to him in some aspects of the life +of the English country gentleman. He was struck by the improvements +effected by its actual owner* on a neighbouring estate, and by the +provisions contained in them for the comfort of both the men and the +animals under his care; and he afterwards made, in reference to them, +what was for a professing Liberal, a very striking remark: 'Talk of +abolishing that class of men! They are the salt of the earth!' Every +Sunday afternoon he and his sister drank tea--weather permitting--on +the lawn with their friends at Brintysilio; and he alludes gracefully +to these meetings in a letter written in the early summer of 1888, when +Lady Martin had urged him to return to Wales. + + * I believe a Captain Best. + +The poet left another and more pathetic remembrance of himself in the +neighbourhood of Llangollen: his weekly presence at the afternoon Sunday +service in the parish church of Llantysilio. Churchgoing was, as I have +said, no part of his regular life. It was no part of his life in London. +But I do not think he ever failed in it at the Universities or in the +country. The assembling for prayer meant for him something deeper in +both the religious and the human sense, where ancient learning and piety +breathed through the consecrated edifice, or where only the figurative +'two or three' were 'gathered together' within it. A memorial tablet now +marks the spot at which on this occasion the sweet grave face and the +venerable head were so often seen. It has been placed by the direction +of Lady Martin on the adjoining wall. + +It was in the September of this year that Mr. Browning heard of the +death of M. Joseph Milsand. This name represented for him one of the few +close friendships which were to remain until the end, unclouded in +fact and in remembrance; and although some weight may be given to those +circumstances of their lives which precluded all possibility of friction +and risk of disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, and Mr. +Browning's unfailing powers of appreciation would, in all possible +cases, have maintained the bond intact. The event was at the last +sudden, but happily not quite unexpected. + +Many other friends had passed by this time out of the poet's life--those +of a younger, as well as his own and an older generation. Miss Haworth +died in 1883. Charles Dickens, with whom he had remained on the most +cordial terms, had walked between him and his son at Thackeray's +funeral, to receive from him, only seven years later, the same pious +office. Lady Augusta Stanley, the daughter of his old friend, Lady +Elgin, was dead, and her husband, the Dean of Westminster. So also were +'Barry Cornwall' and John Forster, Alfred Domett, and Thomas Carlyle, +Mr. Cholmondeley and Lord Houghton; others still, both men and women, +whose love for him might entitle them to a place in his Biography, but +whom I could at most only mention by name. + +For none of these can his feeling have been more constant or more +disinterested than that which bound him to Carlyle. He visited him +at Chelsea in the last weary days of his long life, as often as their +distance from each other and his own engagements allowed. Even the man's +posthumous self-disclosures scarcely availed to destroy the affectionate +reverence which he had always felt for him. He never ceased to defend +him against the charge of unkindness to his wife, or to believe that in +the matter of their domestic unhappiness she was the more responsible +of the two.* Yet Carlyle had never rendered him that service, easy as it +appears, which one man of letters most justly values from another: +that of proclaiming the admiration which he privately expresses for his +works. The fact was incomprehensible to Mr. Browning--it was so foreign +to his own nature; and he commented on it with a touch, though merely a +touch, of bitterness, when repeating to a friend some almost extravagant +eulogium which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. 'If +only,' he said, 'those words had been ever repeated in public, what good +they might have done me!' + + * He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I + believe little liking was lost between them. He told a + comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather + stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing + by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire. He + took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the + conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the + hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see + that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never + ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing + it. + +In the spring of 1886, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent to +the Royal Academy, rendered vacant by the death of Lord Houghton. He had +long been on very friendly terms with the leading Academicians, and a +constant guest at the Banquet; and his fitness for the office admitted +of no doubt. But his nomination by the President, and the manner in +which it was ratified by the Council and general body, gave him sincere +pleasure. + +Early in 1887, the 'Parleyings' appeared. Their author is still the same +Robert Browning, though here and there visibly touched by the hand +of time. Passages of sweet or majestic music, or of exquisite fancy, +alternate with its long stretches of argumentative thought; and the +light of imagination still plays, however fitfully, over statements +of opinion to which constant repetition has given a suggestion of +commonplace. But the revision of the work caused him unusual trouble. +The subjects he had chosen strained his powers of exposition; and I +think he often tried to remedy by mere verbal correction, what was a +defect in the logical arrangement of his ideas. They would slide into +each other where a visible dividing line was required. The last stage of +his life was now at hand; and the vivid return of fancy to his +boyhood's literary loves was in pathetic, perhaps not quite accidental, +coincidence with the fact. It will be well to pause at this beginning +of his decline, and recall so far as possible the image of the man who +lived, and worked, and loved, and was loved among us, during that brief +old age, and the lengthened period of level strength which had preceded +it. The record already given of his life and work supplies the outline +of the picture; but a few more personal details are required for its +completion. + + + + +Chapter 20 + +Constancy to Habit--Optimism--Belief in Providence--Political +Opinions--His Friendships--Reverence for Genius--Attitude towards +his Public--Attitude towards his Work--Habits of Work--His +Reading--Conversational Powers--Impulsiveness and Reserve--Nervous +Peculiarities--His Benevolence--His Attitude towards Women. + + + +When Mr. Browning wrote to Miss Haworth, in the July of 1861, he had +said: 'I shall still grow, I hope; but my root is taken, and remains.' +He was then alluding to a special offshoot of feeling and association, +on the permanence of which it is not now necessary to dwell; but it +is certain that he continued growing up to a late age, and that the +development was only limited by those general roots, those fixed +conditions of his being, which had predetermined its form. This +progressive intellectual vitality is amply represented in his works; it +also reveals itself in his letters in so far as I have been allowed to +publish them. I only refer to it to give emphasis to a contrasted or +corresponding characteristic: his aversion to every thought of change. I +have spoken of his constancy to all degrees of friendship and love. What +he loved once he loved always, from the dearest man or woman to whom his +allegiance had been given, to the humblest piece of furniture which had +served him. It was equally true that what he had done once he was wont, +for that very reason, to continue doing. The devotion to habits of +feeling extended to habits of life; and although the lower constancy +generally served the purposes of the higher, it also sometimes clashed +with them. It conspired with his ready kindness of heart to make him +subject to circumstances which at first appealed to him through that +kindness, but lay really beyond its scope. This statement, it is true, +can only fully apply to the latter part of his life. His powers of +reaction must originally have been stronger, as well as freer from the +paralysis of conflicting motive and interest. The marked shrinking from +effort in any untried direction, which was often another name for his +stability, could scarcely have coexisted with the fresher and more +curious interest in men and things; we know indeed from recorded facts +that it was a feeling of later growth; and it visibly increased with the +periodical nervous exhaustion of his advancing years. I am convinced, +nevertheless, that, when the restiveness of boyhood had passed away, +Mr. Browning's strength was always more passive than active; that he +habitually made the best of external conditions rather than tried to +change them. He was a 'fighter' only by the brain. And on this point, +though on this only, his work is misleading. + +The acquiescent tendency arose in some degree from two equally prominent +characteristics of Mr. Browning's nature: his optimism, and his belief +in direct Providence; and these again represented a condition of +mind which was in certain respects a quality, but must in others be +recognized as a defect. It disposed him too much to make a virtue of +happiness. It tended also to the ignoring or denying of many incidental +possibilities, and many standing problems of human suffering. The first +part of this assertion is illustrated by 'The Two Poets of Croisic', +in which Mr. Browning declares that, other conditions being equal, +the greater poet will have been he who led the happier life, who most +completely--and we must take this in the human as well as religious +sense--triumphed over suffering. The second has its proof in the +contempt for poetic melancholy which flashes from the supposed utterance +of Shakespeare in 'At the Mermaid'; its negative justification in the +whole range of his work. + +Such facts may be hard to reconcile with others already known of Mr. +Browning's nature, or already stated concerning it; but it is in the +depths of that nature that the solution of this, as of more than one +other anomaly, must be sought. It is true that remembered pain dwelt +longer with him than remembered pleasure. It is true that the last great +sorrow of his life was long felt and cherished by him as a religion, and +that it entered as such into the courage with which he first confronted +it. It is no less true that he directly and increasingly cultivated +happiness; and that because of certain sufferings which had been +connected with them, he would often have refused to live his happiest +days again. + +It seems still harder to associate defective human sympathy with his +kind heart and large dramatic imagination, though that very imagination +was an important factor in the case. It forbade the collective and +mathematical estimate of human suffering, which is so much in favour +with modern philanthropy, and so untrue a measure for the individual +life; and he indirectly condemns it in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' in the +parable of 'Bean Stripes'. But his dominant individuality also barred +the recognition of any judgment or impression, any thought or feeling, +which did not justify itself from his own point of view. The barrier +would melt under the influence of a sympathetic mood, as it would +stiffen in the atmosphere of disagreement. It would yield, as did in his +case so many other things, to continued indirect pressure, whether from +his love of justice, the strength of his attachments, or his power +of imaginative absorption. But he was bound by the conditions of an +essentially creative nature. The subjectiveness, if I may for once use +that hackneyed word, had passed out of his work only to root itself more +strongly in his life. He was self-centred, as the creative nature must +inevitably be. He appeared, for this reason, more widely sympathetic in +his works than in his life, though even in the former certain grounds of +vicarious feeling remained untouched. The sympathy there displayed was +creative and obeyed its own law. That which was demanded from him by +reality was responsive, and implied submission to the law of other +minds. + +Such intellectual egotism is unconnected with moral selfishness, though +it often unconsciously does its work. Were it otherwise, I should have +passed over in silence this aspect, comprehensive though it is, of Mr. +Browning's character. He was capable of the largest self-sacrifice and +of the smallest self-denial; and would exercise either whenever love +or duty clearly pointed the way. He would, he believed, cheerfully have +done so at the command, however arbitrary, of a Higher Power; he often +spoke of the absence of such injunction, whether to endurance or action, +as the great theoretical difficulty of life for those who, like himself, +rejected or questioned the dogmatic teachings of Christianity. This +does not mean that he ignored the traditional moralities which have so +largely taken their place. They coincided in great measure with his own +instincts; and few occasions could have arisen in which they would not +be to him a sufficient guide. I may add, though this is a digression, +that he never admitted the right of genius to defy them; when such a +right had once been claimed for it in his presence, he rejoined +quickly, 'That is an error! _noblesse oblige_.' But he had difficulty in +acknowledging any abstract law which did not derive from a Higher Power; +and this fact may have been at once cause and consequence of the special +conditions of his own mind. All human or conventional obligation appeals +finally to the individual judgment; and in his case this could easily be +obscured by the always militant imagination, in regard to any subject +in which his feelings were even indirectly concerned. No one saw +more justly than he, when the object of vision was general or remote. +Whatever entered his personal atmosphere encountered a refracting medium +in which objects were decomposed, and a succession of details, each held +as it were close to the eye, blocked out the larger view. + +We have seen, on the other hand, that he accepted imperfect knowledge as +part of the discipline of experience. It detracted in no sense from his +conviction of direct relations with the Creator. This was indeed the +central fact of his theology, as the absolute individual existence had +been the central fact of his metaphysics; and when he described the +fatal leap in 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' as a frantic appeal to the +Higher Powers for the 'sign' which the man's religion did not afford, +and his nature could not supply, a special dramatic sympathy was at +work within him. The third part of the epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae' +represented his own creed; though this was often accentuated in the +sense of a more personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery, +than the poem conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjective +idealist philosopher were curiously blended in his composition. + +The transition seems violent from this old-world religion to any system +of politics applicable to the present day. They were, nevertheless, +closely allied in Mr. Browning's mind. His politics were, so far as they +went, the practical aspect of his religion. Their cardinal doctrine was +the liberty of individual growth; removal of every barrier of prejudice +or convention by which it might still be checked. He had been a Radical +in youth, and probably in early manhood; he remained, in the truest +sense of the word, a Liberal; and his position as such was defined in +the sonnet prefixed in 1886 to Mr. Andrew Reid's essay, 'Why I am a +Liberal', and bearing the same name. Its profession of faith did not, +however, necessarily bind him to any political party. It separated him +from all the newest developments of so-called Liberalism. He respected +the rights of property. He was a true patriot, hating to see his country +plunged into aggressive wars, but tenacious of her position among the +empires of the world. He was also a passionate Unionist; although the +question of our political relations with Ireland weighed less with him, +as it has done with so many others, than those considerations of law and +order, of honesty and humanity, which have been trampled under foot in +the name of Home Rule. It grieved and surprised him to find himself on +this subject at issue with so many valued friends; and no pain of Lost +Leadership was ever more angry or more intense, than that which came to +him through the defection of a great statesman whom he had honoured and +loved, from what he believed to be the right cause. + +The character of Mr. Browning's friendships reveals itself in great +measure in even a simple outline of his life. His first friends of +his own sex were almost exclusively men of letters, by taste if not by +profession; the circumstances of his entrance into society made this a +matter of course. In later years he associated on cordial terms with +men of very various interests and professions; and only writers of +conspicuous merit, whether in prose or poetry, attracted him as such. No +intercourse was more congenial to him than that of the higher class of +English clergymen. He sympathized in their beliefs even when he did not +share them. Above all he loved their culture; and the love of culture in +general, of its old classic forms in particular, was as strong in him as +if it had been formed by all the natural and conventional associations +of a university career. He had hearty friends and appreciators among the +dignitaries of the Church--successive Archbishops and Bishops, Deans +of Westminster and St. Paul's. They all knew the value of the great +freelance who fought like the gods of old with the regular army. No +name, however, has been mentioned in the poet's family more frequently +or with more affection than that of the Rev. J. D. W. Williams, Vicar +of Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. The mutual acquaintance, which was made +through Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, +was prepared by Mr. Williams' great love for his poems, of which he +translated many into Latin and Greek; but I am convinced that Mr. +Browning's delight in his friend's classical attainments was quite as +great as his gratification in the tribute he himself derived from them. + +His love of genius was a worship: and in this we must include his whole +life. Nor was it, as this feeling so often is, exclusively exercised +upon the past. I do not suppose his more eminent contemporaries ever +quite knew how generous his enthusiasm for them had been, how free from +any under-current of envy, or impulse to avoidable criticism. He could +not endure even just censure of one whom he believed, or had believed +to be great. I have seen him wince under it, though no third person was +present, and heard him answer, 'Don't! don't!' as if physical pain were +being inflicted on him. In the early days he would make his friend, M. +de Monclar, draw for him from memory the likenesses of famous writers +whom he had known in Paris; the sketches thus made of George Sand and +Victor Hugo are still in the poet's family. A still more striking +and very touching incident refers to one of the winters, probably the +second, which he spent in Paris. He was one day walking with little Pen, +when Beranger came in sight, and he bade the child 'run up to' or 'run +past that gentleman, and put his hand for a moment upon him.' This was +a great man, he afterwards explained, and he wished his son to be able +by-and-by to say that if he had not known, he had at all events touched +him. Scientific genius ranked with him only second to the poetical. + +Mr. Browning's delicate professional sympathies justified some +sensitiveness on his own account; but he was, I am convinced, as free +from this quality as a man with a poet-nature could possibly be. It may +seem hazardous to conjecture how serious criticism would have affected +him. Few men so much 'reviewed' have experienced so little. He was by +turns derided or ignored, enthusiastically praised, zealously analyzed +and interpreted: but the independent judgment which could embrace at +once the quality of his mind and its defects, is almost absent--has been +so at all events during later years--from the volumes which have been +written about him. I am convinced, nevertheless, that he would have +accepted serious, even adverse criticism, if it had borne the impress of +unbiassed thought and genuine sincerity. It could not be otherwise with +one in whom the power of reverence was so strongly marked. + +He asked but one thing of his reviewers, as he asked but one thing of +his larger public. The first demand is indicated in a letter to Mrs. +Frank Hill, of January 31, 1884. + + +Dear Mrs. Hill,--Could you befriend me? The 'Century' prints a little +insignificance of mine--an impromptu sonnet--but prints it _correctly_. +The 'Pall Mall' pleases to extract it--and produces what I enclose: +one line left out, and a note of admiration (!) turned into an I, and +a superfluous 'the' stuck in--all these blunders with the correctly +printed text before it! So does the charge of unintelligibility attach +itself to your poor friend--who can kick nobody. Robert Browning. + + +The carelessness often shown in the most friendly quotation could hardly +be absent from that which was intended to support a hostile view; and +the only injustice of which he ever complained, was what he spoke of +as falsely condemning him out of his own mouth. He used to say: 'If a +critic declares that any poem of mine is unintelligible, the reader +may go to it and judge for himself; but, if it is made to appear +unintelligible by a passage extracted from it and distorted by +misprints, I have no redress.' He also failed to realize those +conditions of thought, and still more of expression, which made him +often on first reading difficult to understand; and as the younger +generation of his admirers often deny those difficulties where they +exist, as emphatically as their grandfathers proclaimed them where they +did not, public opinion gave him little help in the matter. + +The second (unspoken) request was in some sense an antithesis to the +first. Mr. Browning desired to be read accurately but not literally. He +deprecated the constant habit of reading him into his work; whether in +search of the personal meaning of a given passage or poem, or in the +light of a foregone conclusion as to what that meaning must be. The +latter process was that generally preferred, because the individual mind +naturally seeks its own reflection in the poet's work, as it does in the +facts of nature. It was stimulated by the investigations of the Browning +Societies, and by the partial familiarity with his actual life which +constantly supplied tempting, if untrustworthy clues. It grew out of the +strong personal as well as literary interest which he inspired. But the +tendency to listen in his work for a single recurrent note always struck +him as analogous to the inspection of a picture gallery with eyes blind +to every colour but one; and the act of sympathy often involved in this +mode of judgment was neutralized for him by the limitation of his genius +which it presupposed. His general objection to being identified with +his works is set forth in 'At the Mermaid', and other poems of the same +volume, in which it takes the form of a rather captious protest against +inferring from the poet any habit or quality of the man; and where also, +under the impulse of the dramatic mood, he enforces the lesson by saying +more than he can possibly mean. His readers might object that his +human personality was so often plainly revealed in his poetic utterance +(whether or not that of Shakespeare was), and so often also avowed by +it, that the line which divided them became impossible to draw. But he +again would have rejoined that the Poet could never express himself with +any large freedom, unless a fiction of impersonality were granted to +him. He might also have alleged, he often did allege, that in his case +the fiction would hold a great deal of truth; since, except in +the rarest cases, the very fact of poetic, above all of dramatic +reproduction, detracts from the reality of the thought or feeling +reproduced. It introduces the alloy of fancy without which the fixed +outlines of even living experience cannot be welded into poetic form. He +claimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should allow for the +action in it of the constructive imagination, in the exercise of which +all deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, which showed itself +in seeking historical authority for every character or incident which he +employed by way of illustration, was especially irritating to him. + +I may (as indeed I must) concede this much, without impugning either +the pleasure or the gratitude with which he recognized the increasing +interest in his poems, and, if sometimes exhibited in a mistaken form, +the growing appreciation of them. + +There was another and more striking peculiarity in Mr. Browning's +attitude towards his works: his constant conviction that the latest must +be the best, because the outcome of the fullest mental experience, and +of the longest practice in his art. He was keenly alive to the necessary +failings of youthful literary production; he also practically denied to +it that quality which so often places it at an advantage over that, not +indeed of more mature manhood, but at all events of advancing age. There +was much in his own experience to blind him to the natural effects of +time; it had been a prolonged triumph over them. But the delusion, in so +far as it was one, lay deeper than the testimony of such experience, and +would I think have survived it. It was the essence of his belief that +the mind is superior to physical change; that it may be helped or +hindered by its temporary alliance with the body, but will none the less +outstrip it in their joint course; and as intellect was for him the life +of poetry, so was the power of poetry independent of bodily progress and +bodily decline. This conviction pervaded his life. He learned, though +happily very late, to feel age an impediment; he never accepted it as a +disqualification. + +He finished his work very carefully. He had the better right to +resent any garbling of it, that this habitually took place through +his punctuation, which was always made with the fullest sense of its +significance to any but the baldest style, and of its special importance +to his own. I have heard him say: 'People accuse me of not taking pains! +I take nothing _but_ pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrast +between the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse to +which the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labour +which he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit must have grown +upon him; it was natural that it should do so as thought gained the +ascendency over emotion in what he had to say. Mrs. Browning told Mr. +Val Prinsep that her husband 'worked at a great rate;' and this fact +probably connected itself with the difficulty he then found in altering +the form or wording of any particular phrase; he wrote most frequently +under that lyrical inspiration in which the idea and the form are least +separable from each other. We know, however, that in the later editions +of his old work he always corrected where he could; and if we notice +the changed lines in 'Paracelsus' or 'Sordello', as they appear in the +edition of 1863, or the slighter alterations indicated for the last +reprint of his works, we are struck by the care evinced in them for +greater smoothness of expression, as well as for greater accuracy and +force. + +He produced less rapidly in later life, though he could throw off +impromptu verses, whether serious or comical, with the utmost ease. +His work was then of a kind which required more deliberation; and other +claims had multiplied upon his time and thoughts. He was glad to have +accomplished twenty or thirty lines in a morning. After lunch-time, for +many years, he avoided, when possible, even answering a note. But he +always counted a day lost on which he had not written something; and in +those last years on which we have yet to enter, he complained bitterly +of the quantity of ephemeral correspondence which kept him back from +his proper work. He once wrote, on the occasion of a short illness which +confined him to the house, 'All my power of imagination seems gone. I +might as well be in bed!' He repeatedly determined to write a poem every +day, and once succeeded for a fortnight in doing so. He was then in +Paris, preparing 'Men and Women'. 'Childe Roland' and 'Women and Roses' +were among those produced on this plan; the latter having been suggested +by some flowers sent to his wife. The lyrics in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' +were written, I believe, on consecutive days; and the intention renewed +itself with his last work, though it cannot have been maintained. + +He was not as great a reader in later as in earlier years; he had +neither time nor available strength to be so if he had wished; and he +absorbed almost unconsciously every item which added itself to the +sum of general knowledge. Books had indeed served for him their most +important purpose when they had satisfied the first curiosities of his +genius, and enabled it to establish its independence. His mind was made +up on the chief subjects of contemporary thought, and what was novel or +controversial in its proceeding had no attraction for him. He would read +anything, short of an English novel, to a friend whose eyes required +this assistance; but such pleasure as he derived from the act was more +often sympathetic than spontaneous, even when he had not, as he often +had, selected for it a book which he already knew. In the course of his +last decade he devoted himself for a short time to the study of Spanish +and Hebrew. The Spanish dramatists yielded him a fund of new enjoyment; +and he delighted in his power of reading Hebrew in its most difficult +printed forms. He also tried, but with less result, to improve his +knowledge of German. His eyesight defied all obstacles of bad paper and +ancient type, and there was anxiety as well as pleasure to those about +him in his unfailing confidence in its powers. He never wore spectacles, +nor had the least consciousness of requiring them. He would read an +old closely printed volume by the waning light of a winter afternoon, +positively refusing to use a lamp. Indeed his preference of the faintest +natural light to the best that could be artificially produced was +perhaps the one suggestion of coming change. He used for all purposes +a single eye; for the two did not combine in their action, the right +serving exclusively for near, the left for distant objects. This was why +in walking he often closed the right eye; while it was indispensable +to his comfort in reading, not only that the light should come from +the right side, but that the left should be shielded from any luminous +object, like the fire, which even at the distance of half the length of +a room would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near sight. + +His literary interest became increasingly centred on records of the +lives of men and women; especially of such men and women as he had +known; he was generally curious to see the newly published biographies, +though often disappointed by them. He would also read, even for his +amusement, good works of French or Italian fiction. His allegiance to +Balzac remained unshaken, though he was conscious of lengthiness when he +read him aloud. This author's deep and hence often poetic realism was, +I believe, bound up with his own earliest aspirations towards dramatic +art. His manner of reading aloud a story which he already knew was +the counterpart of his own method of construction. He would claim his +listener's attention for any apparently unimportant fact which had a +part to play in it: he would say: 'Listen to this description: it will +be important. Observe this character: you will see a great deal more of +him or her.' We know that in his own work nothing was thrown away; no +note was struck which did not add its vibration to the general utterance +of the poem; and his habitual generosity towards a fellow-worker +prompted him to seek and recognize the same quality, even in productions +where it was less conspicuous than in his own. The patient reading which +he required for himself was justified by that which he always demanded +for others; and he claimed it less in his own case for his possible +intricacies of thought or style, than for that compactness of living +structure in which every detail or group of details was essential to the +whole, and in a certain sense contained it. He read few things with so +much pleasure as an occasional chapter in the Old Testament. + +Mr. Browning was a brilliant talker; he was admittedly more a talker +than a conversationalist. But this quality had nothing in common with +self-assertion or love of display. He had too much respect for the +acquirements of other men to wish to impose silence on those who +were competent to speak; and he had great pleasure in listening to a +discussion on any subject in which he was interested, and on which +he was not specially informed. He never willingly monopolized the +conversation; but when called upon to take a prominent part in it, +either with one person or with several, the flow of remembered knowledge +and revived mental experience, combined with the ingenuous eagerness to +vindicate some point in dispute would often carry him away; while his +hearers, nearly as often, allowed him to proceed from absence of any +desire to interrupt him. This great mental fertility had been prepared +by the wide reading and thorough assimilation of his early days; and it +was only at a later, and in certain respects less vigorous period, that +its full bearing could be seen. His memory for passing occurrences, even +such as had impressed him, became very weak; it was so before he had +grown really old; and he would urge this fact in deprecation of any want +of kindness or sympathy, which a given act of forgetfulness might seem +to involve. He had probably always, in matters touching his own life, +the memory of feelings more than that of facts. I think this has been +described as a peculiarity of the poet-nature; and though this memory +is probably the more tenacious of the two, it is no safe guide to the +recovery of facts, still less to that of their order and significance. +Yet up to the last weeks, even the last conscious days of his life, +his remembrance of historical incident, his aptness of literary +illustration, never failed him. His dinner-table anecdotes supplied, +of course, no measure for this spontaneous reproductive power; yet some +weight must be given to the number of years during which he could +abound in such stories, and attest their constant appropriateness by not +repeating them. + +This brilliant mental quality had its drawback, on which I have already +touched in a rather different connection: the obstacle which it created +to even serious and private conversation on any subject on which he was +not neutral. Feeling, imagination, and the vividness of personal points +of view, constantly thwarted the attempt at a dispassionate exchange of +ideas. But the balance often righted itself when the excitement of +the discussion was at an end; and it would even become apparent that +expressions or arguments which he had passed over unheeded, or as it +seemed unheard, had stored themselves in his mind and borne fruit there. + +I think it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined +impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually +reticent where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness +and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human +temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other +their sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have +modified each other. But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally +its conscious motives, some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from +this point of view it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more +expansive quality. He never, however, intentionally withheld from others +such things as it concerned them to know. His intellectual and religious +convictions were open to all who seriously sought them; and if, even +on such points, he did not appear communicative, it was because he took +more interest in any subject of conversation which did not directly +centre in himself. + +Setting aside the delicacies which tend to self-concealment, and for +which he had been always more or less conspicuous; excepting also the +pride which would co-operate with them, all his inclinations were in +the direction of truth; there was no quality which he so much loved +and admired. He thought aloud wherever he could trust himself to do so. +Impulse predominated in all the active manifestations of his nature. The +fiery child and the impatient boy had left their traces in the man; and +with them the peculiar childlike quality which the man of genius never +outgrows, and which, in its mingled waywardness and sweetness, was +present in Robert Browning till almost his dying day. There was also a +recurrent touch of hardness, distinct from the comparatively ungenial +mood of his earlier years of widowhood; and this, like his reserve, +seemed to conflict with his general character, but in reality harmonized +with it. It meant, not that feeling was suspended in him, but that it +was compressed. It was his natural response to any opposition which his +reasonings could not shake nor his will overcome, and which, rightly +or not, conveyed to him the sense of being misunderstood. It reacted in +pain for others, but it lay with an aching weight on his own heart, and +was thrown off in an upheaval of the pent-up kindliness and affection, +the moment their true springs were touched. The hardening power in his +composition, though fugitive and comparatively seldom displayed, was in +fact proportioned to his tenderness; and no one who had not seen him +in the revulsion from a hard mood, or the regret for it, knew what that +tenderness could be. + +Underlying all the peculiarities of his nature, its strength and its +weakness, its exuberance and its reserves, was the nervous excitability +of which I have spoken in an earlier chapter. I have heard him say: +'I am nervous to such a degree that I might fancy I could not enter a +drawing-room, if I did not know from long experience that I can do it.' +He did not desire to conceal this fact, nor need others conceal it for +him; since it was only calculated to disarm criticism and to +strengthen sympathy. The special vital power which he derived from this +organization need not be reaffirmed. It carried also its inevitable +disablements. Its resources were not always under his own control; and +he frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which would +seize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily social +routine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in a +sympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided with +the exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeed +he had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease and +grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probably +far more from his innate human and social qualities than from even his +familiar intercourse with the world. But he could not extemporize a +speech. He could not on the spur of the moment string together the +more or less set phrases which an after-dinner oration demands. All his +friends knew this, and spared him the necessity of refusing. He had +once a headache all day, because at a dinner, the night before, a false +report had reached him that he was going to be asked to speak. This +alone would have sufficed to prevent him from accepting any public +post. He confesses the disability in a pretty note to Professor Knight, +written in reference to a recent meeting of the Wordsworth Society. + + +19, Warwick Crescent, W.: May 9, '84. + +My dear Professor Knight,--I seem ungracious and ungrateful, but am +neither; though, now that your festival is over, I wish I could have +overcome my scruples and apprehensions. It is hard to say--when kind +people press one to 'just speak for a minute'--that the business, +so easy to almost anybody, is too bewildering for oneself. Ever truly +yours, Robert Browning. + + +A Rectorial Address need probably not have been extemporized, but it +would also have been irksome to him to prepare. He was not accustomed +to uttering himself in prose except within the limits, and under +the incitements, of private correspondence. The ceremonial publicity +attaching to all official proceedings would also have inevitably been a +trial to him. He did at one of the Wordsworth Society meetings speak a +sentence from the chair, in the absence of the appointed chairman, +who had not yet arrived; and when he had received his degree from the +University of Edinburgh he was persuaded to say a few words to the +assembled students, in which I believe he thanked them for their warm +welcome; but such exceptions only proved the rule. + +We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes flowed +from him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, due to +a nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; and that the +effusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike old friends and new, +arose also from a momentary want of self-possession. We may admit this +the more readily that in both cases it was allied to real kindness +of intention, above all in the latter, where the fear of seeming cold +towards even a friend's friend, strove increasingly with the defective +memory for names and faces which were not quite familiar to him. He was +also profoundly averse to the idea of posing as a man of superior +gifts; having indeed, in regard to social intercourse, as little of the +fastidiousness of genius as of its bohemianism. He, therefore, made it +a rule, from the moment he took his place as a celebrity in the London +world, to exert himself for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a +dinner-table, whether their own mental resources were great or small; +and this gave rise to a frequent effort at conversation, which converted +itself into a habit, and ended by carrying him away. This at least was +his own conviction in the matter. The loud voice, which so many persons +must have learned to think habitual with him, bore also traces of this +half-unconscious nervous stimulation.* It was natural to him in anger +or excitement, but did not express his gentler or more equable states +of feeling; and when he read to others on a subject which moved him, +his utterance often subsided into a tremulous softness which left it +scarcely audible. + + * Miss Browning reminds me that loud speaking had become + natural to him through the deafness of several of his + intimate friends: Landor, Kirkup, Barry Cornwall, and + previously his uncle Reuben, whose hearing had been impaired + in early life by a blow from a cricket ball. This fact + necessarily modifies my impression of the case, but does not + quite destroy it. + +The mental conditions under which his powers of sympathy were exercised +imposed no limits on his spontaneous human kindness. This characteristic +benevolence, or power of love, is not fully represented in Mr. +Browning's works; it is certainly not prominent in those of the later +period, during which it found the widest scope in his life; but he has +in some sense given its measure in what was intended as an illustration +of the opposite quality. He tells us, in 'Fifine at the Fair', that +while the best strength of women is to be found in their love, the best +product of a man is only yielded to hate. It is the 'indignant wine' +which has been wrung from the grape plant by its external mutilation. He +could depict it dramatically in more malignant forms of emotion; but he +could only think of it personally as the reaction of a nobler feeling +which has been gratuitously outraged or repressed. + +He more directly, and still more truly, described himself when he said +at about the same time, 'I have never at any period of my life been deaf +to an appeal made to me in the name of love.' He was referring to an +experience of many years before, in which he had even yielded his better +judgment to such an appeal; and it was love in the larger sense for +which the concession had been claimed. + +It was impossible that so genuine a poet, and so real a man, should be +otherwise than sensitive to the varied forms of feminine attraction. He +avowedly preferred the society of women to that of men; they were, as +I have already said, his habitual confidants, and, evidently, his most +frequent correspondents; and though he could have dispensed with woman +friends as he dispensed with many other things--though he most often won +them without knowing it--his frank interest in their sex, and the often +caressing kindness of manner in which it was revealed, might justly +be interpreted by individual women into a conscious appeal to their +sympathy. It was therefore doubly remarkable that on the ground of +benevolence, he scarcely discriminated between the claim on him of a +woman, and that of a man; and his attitude towards women was in this +respect so distinctive as to merit some words of notice. It was large, +generous, and unconventional; but, for that very reason, it was not, +in the received sense of the word, chivalrous. Chivalry proceeds on +the assumption that women not only cannot, but should not, take care +of themselves in any active struggle with life; Mr. Browning had no +theoretical objection to a woman's taking care of herself. He saw no +reason why, if she was hit, she should not hit back again, or even +why, if she hit, she should not receive an answering blow. He responded +swiftly to every feminine appeal to his kindness or his protection, +whether arising from physical weakness or any other obvious cause of +helplessness or suffering; but the appeal in such cases lay first to his +humanity, and only in second order to his consideration of sex. He would +have had a man flogged who beat his wife; he would have had one flogged +who ill-used a child--or an animal: he was notedly opposed to any +sweeping principle or practice of vivisection. But he never quite +understood that the strongest women are weak, or at all events +vulnerable, in the very fact of their sex, through the minor traditions +and conventions with which society justly, indeed necessarily, +surrounds them. Still less did he understand those real, if impalpable, +differences between men and women which correspond to the difference +of position. He admitted the broad distinctions which have become +proverbial, and are therefore only a rough measure of the truth. He +could say on occasion: 'You ought to _be_ better; you are a woman; I ought +to _know_ better; I am a man.' But he had had too large an experience of +human nature to attach permanent weight to such generalizations; and +they found certainly no expression in his works. Scarcely an instance of +a conventional, or so-called man's woman, occurs in their whole range. +Excepting perhaps the speaker in 'A Woman's Last Word', 'Pompilia' and +'Mildred' are the nearest approach to it; and in both of these we +find qualities of imagination or thought which place them outside the +conventional type. He instinctively judged women, both morally and +intellectually, by the same standards as men; and when confronted by +some divergence of thought or feeling, which meant, in the woman's case, +neither quality nor defect in any strict sense of the word, but simply +a nature trained to different points of view, an element of perplexity +entered into his probable opposition. When the difference presented +itself in a neutral aspect, it affected him like the casual +peculiarities of a family or a group, or a casual disagreement between +things of the same kind. He would say to a woman friend: 'You women are +so different from men!' in the tone in which he might have said, 'You +Irish, or you Scotch, are so different from Englishmen;' or again, 'It +is impossible for a man to judge how a woman would act in such or such +a case; you are so different;' the case being sometimes one in which +it would be inconceivable to a normal woman, and therefore to the +generality of men, that she should act in any but one way. + +The vague sense of mystery with which the poet's mind usually invests +a being of the opposite sex, had thus often in him its counterpart in +a puzzled dramatic curiosity which constituted an equal ground of +interest. + +This virtual admission of equality between the sexes, combined with his +Liberal principles to dispose him favourably towards the movement for +Female Emancipation. He approved of everything that had been done for +the higher instruction of women, and would, not very long ago, +have supported their admission to the Franchise. But he was so much +displeased by the more recent action of some of the lady advocates of +Women's Rights, that, during the last year of his life, after various +modifications of opinion, he frankly pledged himself to the opposite +view. He had even visions of writing a tragedy or drama in support of +it. The plot was roughly sketched, and some dialogue composed, though I +believe no trace of this remains. + +It is almost implied by all I have said, that he possessed in every mood +the charm of perfect simplicity of manner. On this point he resembled +his father. His tastes lay also in the direction of great simplicity of +life, though circumstances did not allow of his indulging them to the +same extent. It may interest those who never saw him to know that he +always dressed as well as the occasion required, and always with great +indifference to the subject. In Florence he wore loose clothes which +were adapted to the climate; in London his coats were cut by a good +tailor in whatever was the prevailing fashion; the change was simply +with him an incident of the situation. He had also a look of dainty +cleanliness which was heightened by the smooth healthy texture of the +skin, and in later life by the silvery whiteness of his hair. + +His best photographic likenesses were those taken by Mr. Fradelle in +1881, Mr. Cameron and Mr. William Grove in 1888 and 1889. + + + + +Chapter 21 + +1887-1889 + +Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning--Removal to De Vere Gardens--Symptoms +of failing Strength--New Poems; New Edition of his Works--Letters to Mr. +George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady Martin--Primiero and Venice--Letters +to Miss Keep--The last Year in London--Asolo--Letters to Mrs. +Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. + + + +The last years of Mr. Browning's life were introduced by two auspicious +events, in themselves of very unequal importance, but each in its own +way significant for his happiness and his health. One was his son's +marriage on October 4, 1887, to Miss Fannie Coddington, of New York, a +lady towards whom Mr. Barrett Browning had been strongly attracted when +he was a very young man and she little more than a child; the other, his +own removal from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens, which took place +in the previous June. The change of residence had long been with him +only a question of opportunity. He was once even in treaty for a piece +of ground at Kensington, and intended building a house. That in which +he had lived for so many years had faults of construction and situation +which the lapse of time rendered only more conspicuous; the Regent's +Canal Bill had also doomed it to demolition; and when an opening +presented itself for securing one in all essentials more suitable, he +was glad to seize it, though at the eleventh hour. He had mentally fixed +on the new locality in those earlier days in which he still thought his +son might eventually settle in London; and it possessed at the same time +many advantages for himself. It was warmer and more sheltered than any +which he could have found on the north side of the Park; and, in that +close vicinity to Kensington Gardens, walking might be contemplated as a +pleasure, instead of mere compulsory motion from place to place. It was +only too soon apparent that the time had passed when he could reap much +benefit from the event; but he became aware from the first moment of his +installation in the new home that the conditions of physical life had +become more favourable for him. He found an almost pathetic pleasure +in completing the internal arrangements of the well-built, commodious +house. It seems, on looking back, as if the veil had dropped before his +eyes which sometimes shrouds the keenest vision in face of an impending +change; and he had imagined, in spite of casual utterances which +disclaimed the hope, that a new lease of life was being given to him. He +had for several years been preparing for the more roomy dwelling which +he would probably some day inhabit; and handsome pieces of old furniture +had been stowed away in the house in Warwick Crescent, pending the +occasion for their use. He loved antiquities of this kind, in a manner +which sometimes recalled his father's affection for old books; and most +of these had been bought in Venice, where frequent visits to the +noted curiosity-shops had been his one bond of habit with his tourist +countrymen in that city. They matched the carved oak and massive +gildings and valuable tapestries which had carried something of Casa +Guidi into his first London home. Brass lamps that had once hung inside +chapels in some Catholic church, had long occupied the place of the +habitual gaselier; and to these was added in the following year one of +silver, also brought from Venice--the Jewish 'Sabbath lamp'. Another +acquisition, made only a few months, if indeed so long, before he left +London for the last time, was that of a set of casts representing the +Seasons, which were to stand at intervals on brackets in a certain +unsightly space on his drawing-room wall; and he had said of these, +which I think his son was procuring for him: 'Only my four little heads, +and then I shall not buy another thing for the house'--in a tone of +childlike satisfaction at his completed work. + +This summer he merely went to St. Moritz, where he and his sister were, +for the greater part of their stay, again guests of Mrs. Bloomfield +Moore. He was determined to give the London winter a fuller trial in the +more promising circumstances of his new life, and there was much to +be done in De Vere Gardens after his return. His father's six thousand +books, together with those he had himself accumulated, were for the +first time to be spread out in their proper array, instead of crowding +together in rows, behind and behind each other. The new bookcases, which +could stand in the large new study, were waiting to receive them. He did +not know until he tried to fulfil it how greatly the task would tax his +strength. The library was, I believe, never completely arranged. + +During this winter of 1887-8 his friends first perceived that a change +had come over him. They did not realize that his life was drawing to a +close; it was difficult to do so when so much of the former elasticity +remained; when he still proclaimed himself 'quite well' so long as he +was not definitely suffering. But he was often suffering; one terrible +cold followed another. There was general evidence that he had at last +grown old. He, however, made no distinct change in his mode of life. Old +habits, suspended by his longer imprisonments to the house, were resumed +as soon as he was set free. He still dined out; still attended the +private view of every, or almost every art exhibition. He kept up his +unceasing correspondence--in one or two cases voluntarily added to it; +though he would complain day after day that his fingers ached from +the number of hours through which he had held his pen. One of the +interesting letters of this period was written to Mr. George Bainton, of +Coventry, to be used, as that gentleman tells me, in the preparation of +a lecture on the 'Art of Effective Written Composition'. It confirms the +statement I have had occasion to make, that no extraneous influence ever +permanently impressed itself on Mr. Browning's style. + + +29, De Vere Gardens: Oct. 6, '87. + +Dear Sir,--I was absent from London when your kind letter reached +this house, to which I removed some time ago--hence the delay in +acknowledging your kindness and replying, in some degree, to your +request. All I can say, however, is this much--and very little--that, +by the indulgence of my father and mother, I was allowed to live my own +life and choose my own course in it; which, having been the same from +the beginning to the end, necessitated a permission to read nearly all +sorts of books, in a well-stocked and very miscellaneous library. I had +no other direction than my parents' taste for whatever was highest and +best in literature; but I found out for myself many forgotten fields +which proved the richest of pastures: and, so far as a preference of +a particular 'style' is concerned, I believe mine was just the same +at first as at last. I cannot name any one author who exclusively +influenced me in that respect,--as to the fittest expression of +thought--but thought itself had many impulsions from very various +sources, a matter not to your present purpose. I repeat, this is +very little to say, but all in my power--and it is heartily at your +service--if not as of any value, at least as a proof that I gratefully +feel your kindness, and am, dear Sir Yours very truly, Robert Browning. + + +In December 1887 he wrote 'Rosny', the first poem in 'Asolando', and +that which perhaps most displays his old subtle dramatic power; it was +followed by 'Beatrice Signorini' and 'Flute-Music'. Of the 'Bad Dreams' +two or three were also written in London, I think, during that winter. +The 'Ponte dell' Angelo' was imagined during the next autumn in Venice. +'White Witchcraft' had been suggested in the same summer by a letter +from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads +to be seen there. In the spring of 1888 he began revising his works for +the last, and now entirely uniform edition, which was issued in monthly +volumes, and completed by the July of 1889. Important verbal corrections +were made in 'The Inn Album', though not, I think, in many of the later +poems; but that in which he found most room for improvement was, very +naturally, 'Pauline'; and he wrote concerning it to Mr. Smith the +following interesting letter. + + +29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Feb. 27, '88. + +My dear Smith,--When I received the Proofs of the 1st. vol. on Friday +evening, I made sure of returning them next day--so accurately are they +printed. But on looking at that unlucky 'Pauline', which I have not +touched for half a century, a sudden impulse came over me to take the +opportunity of just correcting the most obvious faults of expression, +versification and construction,--letting the _thoughts_--such as they +are--remain exactly as at first: I have only treated the imperfect +expression of these just as I have now and then done for an amateur +friend, if he asked me and I liked him enough to do so. Not a line +is displaced, none added, none taken away. I have just sent it to the +printer's with an explanatory word: and told him that he will have less +trouble with all the rest of the volumes put together than with this +little portion. I expect to return all the rest to-morrow or next day. + +As for the sketch--the portrait--it admits of no very superior +treatment: but, as it is the only one which makes me out youngish,--I +should like to know if an artist could not strengthen the thing by a +pencil touch or two in a few minutes--improve the eyes, eyebrows, and +mouth somewhat. The head too wants improvement: were Pen here he could +manage it all in a moment. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. + + +Any attempt at modifying the expressed thoughts of his twenty-first year +would have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with the work +of another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, if it +had been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words what I +have already asserted, that the power of detail correction either was, +or had become by experience, very strong in him. + +The history of this summer of 1888 is partly given in a letter to Lady +Martin. + + +29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Aug. 12, '88. + +Dear Lady Martin,--The date of your kind letter,--June 18,--would affect +me indeed, but for the good conscience I retain despite of appearances. +So uncertain have I been as to the course we should take,--my sister and +myself--when the time came for leaving town, that it seemed as if +'next week' might be the eventful week when all doubts would +disappear--perhaps the strange cold weather and interminable rain made +it hard to venture from under one's roof even in fancy of being better +lodged elsewhere. This very day week it was the old story--cold--then +followed the suffocating eight or nine tropical days which forbade any +more delay, and we leave to-morrow for a place called Primiero, near +Feltre--where my son and his wife assure us we may be comfortably--and +coolly--housed, until we can accompany them to Venice, which we may stay +at for a short time. You remember our troubles at Llangollen about the +purchase of a Venetian house . . . ? My son, however, nothing daunted, +and acting under abler counsels than I was fortunate enough to obtain,* +has obtained a still more desirable acquisition, in the shape of the +well-known Rezzonico Palace (that of Pope Clement 13th)--and, I believe, +is to be congratulated on his bargain. I cannot profess the same +interest in this as in the earlier object of his ambition, but am quite +satisfied by the evident satisfaction of the 'young people'. So,--by the +old law of compensation,--while we may expect pleasant days abroad--our +chance is gone of once again enjoying your company in your own lovely +Vale of Llangollen;--had we not been pulled otherwise by the inducements +we could not resist,--another term of delightful weeks--each tipped +with a sweet starry Sunday at the little church leading to the +House Beautiful where we took our rest of an evening spent always +memorably--this might have been our fortunate lot once again! As it is, +perhaps we need more energetic treatment than we should get with you +--for both of us are more oppressed than ever by the exigencies of +the lengthy season, and require still more bracing air than the +gently lulling temperature of Wales. May it be doing you, and dear Sir +Theodore, all the good you deserve--throwing in the share due to us, who +must forego it! With all love from us both, ever affectionately yours +Robert Browning. + + * Those of Mr. Alexander Malcolm. + +He did start for Italy on the following day, but had become so ill, that +he was on the point of postponing his departure. He suffered throughout +the journey as he had never suffered on any journey before; and during +his first few days at Primiero, could only lead the life of an invalid. +He rallied, however, as usual, under the potent effects of quiet, +fresh air, and sunshine; and fully recovered his normal state before +proceeding to Venice, where the continued sense of physical health +combined with many extraneous circumstances to convert his proposed +short stay into a long one. A letter from the mountains, addressed to a +lady who had never been abroad, and to whom he sometimes wrote with more +descriptive detail than to other friends, gives a touching glimpse of +his fresh delight in the beauties of nature, and his tender constant +sympathy with the animal creation. + + +Primiero: Sept. 7, '88. + +. . . . . + +'The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, ever since the +clearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you in my last. It is, I +am more and more confirmed in believing, the most beautiful place I +was ever resident in: far more so than Gressoney or even St.-Pierre de +Chartreuse. You would indeed delight in seeing the magnificence of the +mountains,--the range on either side, which morning and evening, in +turn, transmute literally to gold,--I mean what I say. Their utterly +bare ridges of peaks and crags of all shape, quite naked of verdure, +glow like yellow ore; and, at times, there is a silver change, as the +sun prevails or not. + +'The valley is one green luxuriance on all sides; Indian corn, with +beans, gourds, and even cabbages, filling up the interstices; and the +flowers, though not presenting any novelty to my uninstructed eyes, +yet surely more large and purely developed than I remember to have seen +elsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must be +above ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me as +peculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if no +insect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck. . . . + +'. . . Did I tell you we had a little captive fox,--the most engaging +of little vixens? To my great joy she has broken her chain and escaped, +never to be recaptured, I trust. The original wild and untameable nature +was to be plainly discerned even in this early stage of the whelp's +life: she dug herself, with such baby feet, a huge hole, the use +of which was evident, when, one day, she pounced thence on a stray +turkey--allured within reach by the fragments of fox's breakfast,--the +intruder escaping with the loss of his tail. The creature came back one +night to explore the old place of captivity,--ate some food and retired. +For myself,--I continue absolutely well: I do not walk much, but for +more than amends, am in the open air all day long.' + + +No less striking is a short extract from a letter written in Venice to +the same friend, Miss Keep. + + +Ca' Alvise: Oct. 16, '88. + +'Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my +mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom +window commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagulls +flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a +long purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till +presently all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb +sends before it a long column of its own essence apparently: so my day +begins.' + + +We feel, as we read these late, and even later words, that the lyric +imagination was renewing itself in the incipient dissolution of other +powers. It is the Browning of 'Pippa Passes' who speaks in them. + +He suffered less on the whole during the winter of 1888-9. It was +already advanced when he returned to England; and the attacks of cold +and asthma were either shorter or less frequent. He still maintained +throughout the season his old social routine, not omitting his yearly +visit, on the anniversary of Waterloo, to Lord Albemarle, its +last surviving veteran. He went for some days to Oxford during the +commemoration week, and had for the first, as also last time, the +pleasure of Dr. Jowett's almost exclusive society at his beloved Balliol +College. He proceeded with his new volume of poems. A short letter +written to Professor Knight, June 16, and of which the occasion speaks +for itself, fitly closes the labours of his life; for it states his view +of the position and function of poetry, in one brief phrase, which might +form the text to an exhaustive treatise upon them. + + +29, De Vere Gardens, W.: June 16, 1889. + +My dear Professor Knight,--I am delighted to hear that there is a +likelihood of your establishing yourself in Glasgow, and illustrating +Literature as happily as you have expounded Philosophy at St. Andrews. +It is certainly the right order of things: Philosophy first, and Poetry, +which is its highest outcome, afterward--and much harm has been done by +reversing the natural process. How capable you are of doing justice +to the highest philosophy embodied in poetry, your various studies of +Wordsworth prove abundantly; and for the sake of both Literature and +Philosophy I wish you success with all my heart. + +Believe me, dear Professor Knight, yours very truly, Robert Browning. + + +But he experienced, when the time came, more than his habitual +disinclination for leaving home. A distinct shrinking from the fatigue +of going to Italy now added itself to it; for he had suffered when +travelling back in the previous winter, almost as much as on the outward +journey, though he attributed the distress to a different cause: his +nerves were, he thought, shaken by the wearing discomforts incidental +on a broken tooth. He was for the first time painfully sensitive to +the vibration of the train. He had told his friends, both in Venice and +London, that so far as he was able to determine, he would never return +to Italy. But it was necessary he should go somewhere, and he had no +alternative plan. For a short time in this last summer he entertained +the idea of a visit to Scotland; it had indeed definitely shaped itself +in his mind; but an incident, trivial in itself, though he did not think +it so, destroyed the first scheme, and it was then practically too late +to form another. During the second week in August the weather broke. +There could no longer be any question of the northward journey without +even a fixed end in view. His son and daughter had taken possession of +their new home, the Palazzo Rezzonico, and were anxious to see him and +Miss Browning there; their wishes naturally had weight. The casting vote +in favour of Venice was given by a letter from Mrs. Bronson, proposing +Asolo as the intermediate stage. She had fitted up for herself a little +summer retreat there, and promised that her friends should, if they +joined her, be also comfortably installed. The journey was this time +propitious. It was performed without imprudent haste, and Mr. Browning +reached Asolo unfatigued and to all appearance well. + +He saw this, his first love among Italian cities, at a season of the +year more favourable to its beauty than even that of his first visit; +yet he must himself have been surprised by the new rapture of admiration +which it created in him, and which seemed to grow with his lengthened +stay. This state of mind was the more striking, that new symptoms of his +physical decline were now becoming apparent, and were in themselves of a +depressing kind. He wrote to a friend in England, that the atmosphere +of Asolo, far from being oppressive, produced in him all the effects of +mountain air, and he was conscious of difficulty of breathing whenever +he walked up hill. He also suffered, as the season advanced, great +inconvenience from cold. The rooms occupied by himself and his sister +were both unprovided with fireplaces; and though the daily dinner with +Mrs. Bronson obviated the discomfort of the evenings, there remained +still too many hours of the autumnal day in which the impossibility of +heating their own little apartment must have made itself unpleasantly +felt. The latter drawback would have been averted by the fulfilment of +Mr. Browning's first plan, to be in Venice by the beginning of October, +and return to the comforts of his own home before the winter had quite +set in; but one slight motive for delay succeeded another, till at last +a more serious project introduced sufficient ground of detention. He +seemed possessed by a strange buoyancy--an almost feverish joy in life, +which blunted all sensations of physical distress, or helped him to +misinterpret them. When warned against the imprudence of remaining where +he knew he suffered from cold, and believed, rightly or wrongly, that +his asthmatic tendencies were increased, he would reply that he was +growing acclimatized--that he was quite well. And, in a fitful or +superficial sense, he must have been so. + +His letters of that period are one continuous picture, glowing with +his impressions of the things which they describe. The same words will +repeat themselves as the same subject presents itself to his pen; but +the impulse to iteration scarcely ever affects us as mechanical. +It seems always a fresh response to some new stimulus to thought or +feeling, which he has received. These reach him from every side. It is +not only the Asolo of this peaceful later time which has opened before +him, but the Asolo of 'Pippa Passes' and 'Sordello'; that which first +stamped itself on his imagination in the echoes of the Court life of +Queen Catharine,* and of the barbaric wars of the Eccelini. Some of his +letters dwell especially on these early historical associations: on the +strange sense of reopening the ancient chronicle which he had so deeply +studied fifty years before. The very phraseology of the old Italian +text, which I am certain he had never glanced at from that distant time, +is audible in an account of the massacre of San Zenone, the scene of +which he has been visiting. To the same correspondent he says that +his two hours' drive to Asolo 'seemed to be a dream;' and again, after +describing, or, as he thinks, only trying to describe some beautiful +feature of the place, 'but it is indescribable!' + + * Catharine Cornaro, the dethroned queen of Cyprus. + +A letter addressed to Mrs. FitzGerald, October 8, 1889, is in part a +fitting sequel to that which he had written to her from the same spot, +eleven years before. + + +'. . . Fortunately there is little changed here: my old +Albergo,--ruinous with earthquake--is down and done with--but few +novelties are observable--except the regrettable one that the silk +industry has been transported elsewhere--to Cornuda and other places +nearer the main railway. No more Pippas--at least of the silk-winding +sort! + +'But the pretty type is far from extinct. + +'Autumn is beginning to paint the foliage, but thin it as well; and +the sea of fertility all round our height, which a month ago showed +pomegranates and figs and chestnuts,--walnuts and apples all rioting +together in full glory,--all this is daily disappearing. I say nothing +of the olive and the vine. I find the Turret rather the worse for +careful weeding--the hawks which used to build there have been "shot for +food"--and the echo is sadly curtailed of its replies; still, things +are the same in the main. Shall I ever see them again, when--as I +suppose--we leave for Venice in a fortnight? . . .' + + +In the midst of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks the +old keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges for what +living things were to be found there. He would whistle softly to the +lizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old +power of attracting them. + +On the 15th of October he wrote to Mrs. Skirrow, after some preliminary +description: + + +Then--such a view over the whole Lombard plain; not a site in view, or +_approximate_ view at least, without its story. Autumn is now painting all +the abundance of verdure,--figs, pomegranates, chestnuts, and vines, and +I don't know what else,--all in a wonderful confusion,--and now glowing +with all the colours of the rainbow. Some weeks back, the little town +was glorified by the visit of a decent theatrical troop who played in a +theatre _in_side the old palace of Queen Catharine Cornaro--utilized also +as a prison in which I am informed are at present full five if not six +malefactors guilty of stealing grapes, and the like enormities. Well, +the troop played for a fortnight together exceedingly well--high tragedy +and low comedy--and the stage-box which I occupied cost 16 francs. The +theatre had been out of use for six years, for we are out of the way +and only a baiting-place for a company pushing on to Venice. In fine, we +shall stay here probably for a week or more,--and then proceed to Pen, +at the Rezzonico; a month there, and then homewards! . . . + +I delight in finding that the beloved Husband and precious friend +manages to do without the old yoke about his neck, and enjoys himself as +never anybody had a better right to do. I continue to congratulate him +on his emancipation and ourselves on a more frequent enjoyment of his +company in consequence.* Give him my true love; take mine, dearest +friend,--and my sister's love to you both goes with it. Ever +affectionately yours Robert Browning. + + * Mr. Skirrow had just resigned his post of Master in + Chancery. + +The cry of 'homewards!' now frequently recurs in his letters. We find it +in one written a week later to Mr. G. M. Smith, otherwise very +expressive of his latest condition of mind and feeling. + + +Asolo, Veneto, Italia: Oct. 22, '89. + +My dear Smith,--I was indeed delighted to get your letter two days ago-- +for there _are_ such accidents as the loss of a parcel, even when it has +been despatched from so important a place as this city--for a regular +city it is, you must know, with all the rights of one,--older far than +Rome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name to the +adjoining hills. 'Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the walls +still surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, and +you even overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900 +souls--in the city Proper, that is--for the territory below and around +contains some 10,000. But we are at the very top of things, garlanded +about, as it were, with a narrow line of houses,--some palatial, such as +you would be glad to see in London,--and above all towers the old +dwelling of Queen Cornaro, who was forced to exchange her Kingdom of +Cyprus for this pretty but petty dominion where she kept state in a +mimic Court, with Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, for her secretary--who has +commemorated the fact in his 'Asolani' or dialogues inspired by the +place: and I do assure you that, after some experience of beautiful +sights in Italy and elsewhere I know nothing comparable to the view from +the Queen's tower and palace, still perfect in every respect. Whenever +you pay Pen and his wife the visit you are pledged to, * it will go hard +but you spend five hours in a journey to Asolo. The one thing I am +disappointed in is to find that the silk-cultivation with all the pretty +girls who were engaged in it are transported to Cornuda and other +places,--nearer the railway, I suppose: and to this may be attributed +the decrease in the number of inhabitants. The weather when I wrote last +_was_ 'blue and blazing--(at noon-day)--' but we share in the general +plague of rain,--had a famous storm yesterday: while to-day is blue and +sunny as ever. Lastly, for your admonition: we _have_ a perfect +telegraphic communication; and at the passage above, where I put a * I +was interrupted by the arrival of a telegram: thank you all the same for +your desire to relieve my anxiety. And now, to our immediate business-- +which is only to keep thanking you for your constant goodness, present +and future: do with the book just as you will. I fancy it is bigger in +bulk than usual. As for the 'proofs'--I go at the end of the month to +Venice, whither you will please to send whatever is necessary. . . . I +shall do well to say as little as possible of my good wishes for you and +your family, for it comes to much the same thing as wishing myself +prosperity: no matter, my sister's kindest regards shall excuse mine, +and I will only add that I am, as ever, Affectionately yours Robert +Browning. + + +A general quickening of affectionate impulse seemed part of this last +leap in the socket of the dying flame. + + + + +Chapter 22 + +1889 + +Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo--Venice--Letter to Mr. G. +Moulton-Barrett--Lines in the 'Athenaeum'--Letter to Miss +Keep--Illness--Death-- Funeral Ceremonial at Venice--Publication +of 'Asolando'--Interment in Poets' Corner. + + + +He had said in writing to Mrs. FitzGerald, 'Shall I ever see them' (the +things he is describing) 'again?' If not then, soon afterwards, he +conceived a plan which was to insure his doing so. On a piece of ground +belonging to the old castle, stood the shell of a house. The two +constituted one property which the Municipality of Asolo had hitherto +refused to sell. It had been a dream of Mr. Browning's life to possess +a dwelling, however small, in some beautiful spot, which should place +him beyond the necessity of constantly seeking a new summer resort, and +above the alternative of living at an inn, or accepting--as he sometimes +feared, abusing--the hospitality of his friends. He was suddenly +fascinated by the idea of buying this piece of ground; and, with the +efficient help which his son could render during his absence, completing +the house, which should be christened 'Pippa's Tower'. It was evident, +he said in one of his letters, that for his few remaining years his +summer wanderings must always end in Venice. What could he do better +than secure for himself this resting-place by the way? + +His offer of purchase was made through Mrs. Bronson, to Count Loredano +and other important members of the municipality, and their personal +assent to it secured. But the town council was on the eve of +re-election; no important business could be transacted by it till after +this event; and Mr. Browning awaited its decision till the end of +October at Asolo, and again throughout November in Venice, without fully +understanding the delay. The vote proved favourable; but the night on +which it was taken was that of his death. + +The consent thus given would have been only a first step towards the +accomplishment of his wish. It was necessary that it should be ratified +by the Prefecture of Treviso, in the district of which Asolo lies; and +Mr. Barrett Browning, who had determined to carry on the negotiations, +met with subsequent opposition in the higher council. This has now, +however, been happily overcome. + +A comprehensive interest attaches to one more letter of the Asolo time. +It was addressed to Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George +Moulton-Barrett. + + +Asolo, Veneto: Oct. 22, '89. + +My dear George,--It was a great pleasure to get your kind letter; though +after some delay. We were not in the Tyrol this year, but have been for +six weeks or more in this little place which strikes me,--as it did +fifty years ago, which is something to say, considering that, properly +speaking, it was the first spot of Italian soil I ever set foot upon-- +having proceeded to Venice by sea--and thence here. It is an ancient +city, older than Rome, and the scene of Queen Catharine Cornaro's exile, +where she held a mock court, with all its attendants, on a miniature +scale; Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, being her secretary. Her palace is +still above us all, the old fortifications surround the hill-top, and +certain of the houses are stately--though the population is not above +1,000 souls: the province contains many more of course. But the immense +charm of the surrounding country is indescribable--I have never seen its +like--the Alps on one side, the Asolan mountains all round,--and +opposite, the vast Lombard plain,--with indications of Venice, Padua, +and the other cities, visible to a good eye on a clear day; while +everywhere are sites of battles and sieges of bygone days, described in +full by the historians of the Middle Ages. + +We have a valued friend here, Mrs. Bronson, who for years has been our +hostess at Venice, and now is in possession of a house here (built into +the old city wall)--she was induced to choose it through what I have +said about the beauties of the place: and through her care and kindness +we are comfortably lodged close by. We think of leaving in a week or so +for Venice--guests of Pen and his wife; and after a short stay with them +we shall return to London. Pen came to see us for a couple of days: I +was hardly prepared for his surprise and admiration which quite equalled +my own and that of my sister. All is happily well with them--their +palazzo excites the wonder of everybody, so great is Pen's cleverness, +and extemporised architectural knowledge, as apparent in all he has done +there; why, _why_ will you not go and see him there? He and his wife are +very hospitable and receive many visitors. Have I told you that there +was a desecrated chapel which he has restored in honour of his mother-- +putting up there the inscription by Tommaseo now above Casa Guidi? + +Fannie is all you say,--and most dear and precious to us all. . . . +Pen's medal to which you refer, is awarded to him in spite of his +written renunciation of any sort of wish to contend for a prize. He will +now resume painting and sculpture--having been necessarily occupied with +the superintendence of his workmen--a matter capitally managed, I am +told. For the rest, both Sarianna and myself are very well; I have just +sent off my new volume of verses for publication. The complete edition +of the works of E. B. B. begins in a few days. + + +The second part of this letter is very forcibly written, and, in a +certain sense, more important than the first; but I suppress it by the +desire of Mr. Browning's sister and son, and in complete concurrence +with their judgment in the matter. It was a systematic defence of the +anger aroused in him by a lately published reference to his wife's +death; and though its reasonings were unanswerable as applied to the +causes of his emotion, they did not touch the manner in which it had +been displayed. The incident was one which deserved only to be +forgotten; and if an injudicious act had not preserved its memory, no +word of mine should recall it. Since, however, it has been thought fit +to include the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald' in a widely circulated +Bibliography of Mr. Browning's Works,* I owe it to him to say--what I +believe is only known to his sister and myself--that there was a moment +in which he regretted those lines, and would willingly have withdrawn +them. This was the period, unfortunately short, which intervened between +his sending them to the 'Athenaeum', and their appearance there. When +once public opinion had expressed itself upon them in its too extreme +forms of sympathy and condemnation, the pugnacity of his mind found +support in both, and regret was silenced if not destroyed. In so far as +his published words remained open to censure, I may also, without +indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the merely +sympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhaps +disgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow. +He spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. +The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though never +forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which so unexpectedly met +his eye, in a vividness of remembrance which was reality. 'I felt as if +she had died yesterday,' he said some days later to a friend, in half +deprecation, half denial, of the too great fierceness of his reaction. +He only recovered his balance in striking the counter-blow. That he +could be thus affected at an age usually destructive of the more violent +emotions, is part of the mystery of those closing days which had already +overtaken him. + + * That contained in Mr. Sharp's 'Life'. A still more recent + publication + gives the lines in full. + +By the first of November he was in Venice with his son and daughter; and +during the three following weeks was apparently well, though a physician +whom he met at a dinner party, and to whom he had half jokingly given +his pulse to feel, had learned from it that his days were numbered. He +wrote to Miss Keep on the 9th of the month: + + +'. . . Mrs. Bronson has bought a house at Asolo, and beautified it +indeed,--niched as it is in an old tower of the fortifications still +partly surrounding the city (for a city it is), and eighteen towers, +more or less ruinous, are still discoverable there: it is indeed a +delightful place. Meantime, to go on,--we came here, and had a pleasant +welcome from our hosts--who are truly magnificently lodged in this +vast palazzo which my son has really shown himself fit to possess, so +surprising are his restorations and improvements: the whole is all but +complete, decorated,--that is, renewed admirably in all respects. + +'What strikes me as most noteworthy is the cheerfulness and comfort of +the huge rooms. + +'The building is warmed throughout by a furnace and pipes. + +'Yesterday, on the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine, +blue sky,--snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, ever +suited my needs, bodily and intellectual, so well. + +'The first are satisfied--I am _quite_ well, every breathing inconvenience +gone: and as for the latter, I got through whatever had given me trouble +in London. . . .' + + +But it was winter, even in Venice, and one day began with an actual fog. +He insisted, notwithstanding, on taking his usual walk on the Lido. He +caught a bronchial cold of which the symptoms were aggravated not only +by the asthmatic tendency, but by what proved to be exhaustion of the +heart; and believing as usual that his liver alone was at fault, he took +little food, and refused wine altogether.* + + * He always declined food when he was unwell; and maintained + that in this respect the instinct of animals was far more + just than the idea often prevailing among human beings that + a failing appetite should be assisted or coerced. + +He did not yield to the sense of illness; he did not keep his bed. Some +feverish energy must have supported him through this avoidance of every +measure which might have afforded even temporary strength or relief. On +Friday, the 29th, he wrote to a friend in London that he had waited thus +long for the final answer from Asolo, but would wait no longer. He would +start for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday of the +following week. It was true 'he had caught a cold; he felt sadly +asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel; but he hoped for the best, and would +write again soon.' He wrote again the following day, declaring himself +better. He had been punished, he said, for long-standing neglect of +his 'provoking liver'; but a simple medicine, which he had often taken +before, had this time also relieved the oppression of his chest; his +friend was not to be uneasy about him; 'it was in his nature to get +into scrapes of this kind, but he always managed, somehow or other, to +extricate himself from them.' He concluded with fresh details of his +hopes and plans. + +In the ensuing night the bronchial distress increased; and in the +morning he consented to see his son's physician, Dr. Cini, whose +investigation of the case at once revealed to him its seriousness. The +patient had been removed two days before, from the second storey of the +house, which the family then inhabited, to an entresol apartment just +above the ground-floor, from which he could pass into the dining-room +without fatigue. Its lower ceilings gave him (erroneously) an impression +of greater warmth, and he had imagined himself benefited by the change. +A freer circulation of air was now considered imperative, and he was +carried to Mrs. Browning's spacious bedroom, where an open fireplace +supplied both warmth and ventilation, and large windows admitted all +the sunshine of the Grand Canal. Everything was done for him which +professional skill and loving care could do. Mrs. Browning, assisted +by her husband, and by a young lady who was then her guest,* filled the +place of the trained nurses until these could arrive; for a few days +the impending calamity seemed even to have been averted. The bronchial +attack was overcome. Mr. Browning had once walked from the bed to +the sofa; his sister, whose anxiety had perhaps been spared the full +knowledge of his state, could send comforting reports to his friends +at home. But the enfeebled heart had made its last effort. Attacks +of faintness set in. Special signs of physical strength maintained +themselves until within a few hours of the end. On Wednesday, December +11, a consultation took place between Dr. Cini, Dr. da Vigna, and Dr. +Minich; and the opinion was then expressed for the first time +that recovery, though still possible, was not within the bounds of +probability. Weakness, however, rapidly gained upon him towards the +close of the following day. Two hours before midnight of this Thursday, +December 12, he breathed his last. + + * Miss Evelyn Barclay, now Mrs. Douglas Giles. + +He had been a good patient. He took food and medicine whenever they were +offered to him. Doctors and nurses became alike warmly interested in +him. His favourite among the latter was, I think, the Venetian, a widow, +Margherita Fiori, a simple kindly creature who had known much sorrow. To +her he said, about five hours before the end, 'I feel much worse. I +know now that I must die.' He had shown at intervals a perception, even +conviction, of his danger; but the excitement of the brain, caused by +exhaustion on the one hand and the necessary stimulants on the other, +must have precluded all systematic consciousness of approaching death. +He repeatedly assured his family that he was not suffering. + +A painful and urgent question now presented itself for solution: Where +should his body find its last rest? He had said to his sister in the +foregoing summer, that he wished to be buried wherever he might die: if +in England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy, +with his wife. Circumstances all pointed to his removal to Florence; but +a recent decree had prohibited further interment in the English Cemetery +there, and the town had no power to rescind it. When this was known +in Venice, that city begged for itself the privilege of retaining the +illustrious guest, and rendering him the last honours. For the moment +the idea even recommended itself to Mr. Browning's son. But he felt +bound to make a last effort in the direction of the burial at Florence; +and was about to despatch a telegram, in which he invoked the mediation +of Lord Dufferin, when all difficulties were laid at rest by a message +from the Dean of Westminster, conveying his assent to an interment in +the Abbey.* He had already telegraphed for information concerning the +date of the funeral, with a view to the memorial service, which he +intended to hold on the same day. Nor would the further honour have +remained for even twenty-four hours ungranted, because unasked, but for +the belief prevailing among Mr. Browning's friends that there was no +room for its acceptance. + + * The assent thus conveyed had assumed the form of an offer, + and was characterized as such by the Dean himself. + +It was still necessary to provide for the more immediate removal of the +body. Local custom forbade its retention after the lapse of two days and +nights; and only in view of the special circumstances of the case could +a short respite be granted to the family. Arrangements were therefore at +once made for a private service, to be conducted by the British Chaplain +in one of the great halls of the Rezzonico Palace; and by two o'clock of +the following day, Sunday, a large number of visitors and residents had +assembled there. The subsequent passage to the mortuary island of San +Michele had been organized by the city, and was to display so much of +the character of a public pageant as the hurried preparation allowed. +The chief municipal officers attended the service. When this had been +performed, the coffin was carried by eight firemen (pompieri), arrayed +in their distinctive uniform, to the massive, highly decorated municipal +barge (Barca delle Pompe funebri) which waited to receive it. It was +guarded during the transit by four 'uscieri' in 'gala' dress, two +sergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two of the firemen bearing +torches: the remainder of these following in a smaller boat. The barge +was towed by a steam launch of the Royal Italian Marine. The chief +officers of the city, the family and friends in their separate gondolas, +completed the procession. On arriving at San Michele, the firemen again +received their burden, and bore it to the chapel in which its place had +been reserved. + + +When 'Pauline' first appeared, the Author had received, he never learned +from whom, a sprig of laurel enclosed with this quotation from the poem, + + Trust in signs and omens. + +Very beautiful garlands were now piled about his bier, offerings of +friendship and affection. Conspicuous among these was the ceremonial +structure of metallic foliage and porcelain flowers, inscribed 'Venezia +a Roberto Browning', which represented the Municipality of Venice. On +the coffin lay one comprehensive symbol of the fulfilled prophecy: a +wreath of laurel-leaves which his son had placed there. + + +A final honour was decreed to the great English Poet by the city in +which he had died; the affixing of a memorial tablet to the outer wall +of the Rezzonico Palace. Since these pages were first written, the +tablet has been placed. It bears the following inscription: + + A + ROBERTO BROWNING + + MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO + IL 12 DICEMBRE 1889 + VENEZIA + POSE + +Below this, in the right-hand corner appear two lines selected from his +works: + + Open my heart and you will see + Graved inside of it, 'Italy'. + +Nor were these the only expressions of Italian respect and sympathy. The +municipality of Florence sent its message of condolence. Asolo, poor +in all but memories, itself bore the expenses of a mural tablet for +the house which Mr. Browning had occupied. It is now known that Signor +Crispi would have appealed to Parliament to rescind the exclusion +from the Florentine cemetery, if the motive for doing so had been less +promptly removed. + +Mr. Browning's own country had indeed opened a way for the reunion of +the husband and wife. The idea had rapidly shaped itself in the public +mind that, since they might not rest side by side in Italy, they +should be placed together among the great of their own land; and it was +understood that the Dean would sanction Mrs. Browning's interment in +the Abbey, if a formal application to this end were made to him. But +Mr. Barrett Browning could not reconcile himself to the thought of +disturbing his mother's grave, so long consecrated to Florence by her +warm love and by its grateful remembrance; and at the desire of both +surviving members of the family the suggestion was set aside. + +Two days after his temporary funeral, privately and at night, all that +remained of Robert Browning was conveyed to the railway station; and +thence, by a trusted servant, to England. The family followed within +twenty-four hours, having made the necessary preparations for a long +absence from Venice; and, travelling with the utmost speed, arrived in +London on the same day. The house in De Vere Gardens received its master +once more. + + +'Asolando' was published on the day of Mr. Browning's death. The report +of his illness had quickened public interest in the forthcoming work, +and his son had the satisfaction of telling him of its already realized +success, while he could still receive a warm, if momentary, pleasure +from the intelligence. The circumstances of its appearance place it +beyond ordinary criticism; they place it beyond even an impartial +analysis of its contents. It includes one or two poems to which we would +gladly assign a much earlier date; I have been told on good authority +that we may do this in regard to one of them. It is difficult to refer +the 'Epilogue' to a coherent mood of any period of its author's life. It +is certain, however, that by far the greater part of the little volume +was written in 1888-89, and I believe all that is most serious in it +was the product of the later year. It possesses for many readers the +inspiration of farewell words; for all of us it has their pathos. + + +He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, on the 31st +of December, 1889. In this tardy act of national recognition England +claimed her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of his +countrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poet +to his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs. Browning's poem, +'The Sleep', set to music by Dr. Bridge, were sung for the first time on +this occasion. + + + + +Conclusion + + + +A few words must still be said upon that purport and tendency of Robert +Browning's work, which has been defined by a few persons, and felt by +very many as his 'message'. + +The definition has been disputed on the ground of Art. We are told by +Mr. Sharp, though in somewhat different words, that the poet, qua poet, +cannot deliver a 'message' such as directly addresses itself to the +intellectual or moral sense; since his special appeal to us lies not +through the substance, but through the form, or presentment, of what he +has had to say; since, therefore (by implication), in claiming for it +an intellectual--as distinct from an aesthetic--character, we ignore its +function as poetry. + +It is difficult to argue justly, where the question at issue turns +practically on the meaning of a word. Mr. Sharp would, I think, be the +first to admit this; and it appears to me that, in the present case, he +so formulates his theory as to satisfy his artistic conscience, and yet +leave room for the recognition of that intellectual quality so peculiar +to Mr. Browning's verse. But what one member of the aesthetic school may +express with a certain reserve is proclaimed unreservedly by many more; +and Mr. Sharp must forgive me, if for the moment I regard him as one of +these; and if I oppose his arguments in the words of another poet +and critic of poetry, whose claim to the double title is I believe +undisputed--Mr. Roden Noel. I quote from an unpublished fragment of a +published article on Mr. Sharp's 'Life of Browning'. + + +'Browning's message is an integral part of himself as writer; (whether +as poet, since we agree that he is a poet, were surely a too curious +and vain discussion;) but some of his finest things assuredly are the +outcome of certain very definite personal convictions. "The question," +Mr. Sharp says, "is not one of weighty message, but of artistic +presentation." There seems to be no true contrast here. "The primary +concern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression"--no--not +the primary concern. Since the critic adds--(for a poet) "this vehicle +is language emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music by impassioned +thought or sensation." Exactly--"thought" it may be. Now part of this +same "thought" in Browning is the message. And therefore it is part of +his "primary concern". "It is with presentment," says Mr. Sharp, "that +the artist has fundamentally to concern himself." Granted: but it must +surely be presentment of _something_. . . . I do not understand how +to separate the substance from the form in true poetry. . . . If the +message be not well delivered, it does not constitute literature. But +if it be well delivered, the primary concern of the poet lay with the +message after all!' + + +More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the 'message' +as judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression or +exposition of a vivid a priori religious faith confirmed by positive +experience; and it reflects as such a double order of thought, in which +totally opposite mental activities are often forced into co-operation +with each other. Mr. Sharp says, this time quoting from Mr. Mortimer +('Scottish Art Review', December 1889): + + +'His position in regard to the thought of the age is paradoxical, if not +inconsistent. He is in advance of it in every respect but one, the most +important of all, the matter of fundamental principles; in these he +is behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific in their +precision of analysis; the sudden conclusion which he imposes upon them +is transcendental and inept.' + + +This statement is relatively true. Mr. Browning's positive reasonings +often do end with transcendental conclusions. They also start from +transcendental premises. However closely his mind might follow the +visible order of experience, he never lost what was for him the +consciousness of a Supreme Eternal Will as having existed before it; he +never lost the vision of an intelligent First Cause, as underlying all +minor systems of causation. But such weaknesses as were involved in +his logical position are inherent to all the higher forms of natural +theology when once it has been erected into a dogma. As maintained by +Mr. Browning, this belief held a saving clause, which removed it from +all dogmatic, hence all admissible grounds of controversy: the more +definite or concrete conceptions of which it consists possessed no +finality for even his own mind; they represented for him an absolute +truth in contingent relations to it. No one felt more strongly than he +the contradictions involved in any conceivable system of Divine creation +and government. No one knew better that every act and motive which we +attribute to a Supreme Being is a virtual negation of His existence. +He believed nevertheless that such a Being exists; and he accepted His +reflection in the mirror of the human consciousness, as a necessarily +false image, but one which bears witness to the truth. + +His works rarely indicate this condition of feeling; it was not often +apparent in his conversation. The faith which he had contingently +accepted became absolute for him from all practical points of view; it +became subject to all the conditions of his humanity. On the ground of +abstract logic he was always ready to disavow it; the transcendental +imagination and the acknowledged limits of human reason claimed the last +word in its behalf. This philosophy of religion is distinctly suggested +in the fifth parable of 'Ferishtah's Fancies'. + +But even in defending what remains, from the most widely accepted point +of view, the validity of Mr. Browning's 'message', we concede the fact +that it is most powerful when conveyed in its least explicit form; for +then alone does it bear, with the full weight of his poetic utterance, +on the minds to which it is addressed. His challenge to Faith and Hope +imposes itself far less through any intellectual plea which he can +advance in its support, than through the unconscious testimony of all +creative genius to the marvel of conscious life; through the passionate +affirmation of his poetic and human nature, not only of the goodness and +the beauty of that life, but of its reality and its persistence. + +We are told by Mr. Sharp that a new star appeared in Orion on the night +on which Robert Browning died. The alleged fact is disproved by the +statement of the Astronomer Royal, to whom it has been submitted; but it +would have been a beautiful symbol of translation, such as affectionate +fancy might gladly cherish if it were true. It is indeed true that +on that twelfth of December, a vivid centre of light and warmth was +extinguished upon our earth. The clouded brightness of many lives +bears witness to the poet spirit which has departed, the glowing human +presence which has passed away. We mourn the poet whom we have lost far +less than we regret the man: for he had done his appointed work; and +that work remains to us. But the two beings were in truth inseparable. +The man is always present in the poet; the poet was dominant in the man. +This fact can never be absent from our loving remembrance of him. No +just estimate of his life and character will fail to give it weight. + + + + + + +Index + +[The Index is included only as a rough guide to what is in this book. +The numbers in brackets indicate the number of index entries: as +each reference, short or long, is counted as one, the numbers may be +misleading if observed too closely.] + + + Abel, Mr. (musician) [1] + Adams, Mrs. Sarah Flower [2] + Albemarle, Lord [1] + Alford, Lady Marian [1] + Allingham, Mr. William [1] + American appreciation of Browning [1] + Ampere, M. [1] + Ancona [1] + Anderson, Mr. (actor) [1] + Arnold, Matthew [1] + Arnould, Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) [1] + Ashburton, Lady [1] + Asolo [4] + Associated Societies of Edinburgh, the [1] + Athenaeum, the (review of 'Pauline') [2] + Audierne (Finisterre, Brittany) [1] + Azeglio, Massimo d' [1] + + Balzac's works, the Brownings' admiration of [2] + Barrett, Miss Arabel [4] + Barrett, Miss Henrietta (afterwards Mrs. Surtees Cook [Altham]) [2] + Barrett, Mr. (the poet's father-in-law) [3] + Barrett, Mr. Laurence (actor) [1] + Bartoli's 'De' Simboli trasportati al Morale' [1] + Benckhausen, Mr. (Russian consul-general) [1] + Benzon, Mr. Ernest [1] + Beranger, M. [2] + Berdoe, Dr. Edward: his paper on 'Paracelsus, the Reformer of + Medicine' [1] + Biarritz [1] + Blackwood's Magazine (on 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon') [1] + Blagden, Miss Isa [5] + Blundell, Dr. (physician) [1] + Boyle, Dean (Salisbury) [1] + Boyle, Miss (niece of the Earl of Cork) [2] + Bridell-Fox, Mrs. [3] + Bronson, Mrs. Arthur [5] + Browning, Robert (grandfather of the poet): account of his life, + two marriages, and two families [1] + Browning, Mrs. (step-grandmother of the poet) [2] + Browning, Robert (father of the poet): marriage; + clerk in the Bank of England; comparison between him and his son; + scholarly and artistic tastes; simplicity and genuineness of + his character; + his strong health; Mr. Locker-Lampson's account of him; + his religious opinions; renewed relations with his father's widow + and second family; death [10] + Browning, Mrs. (the poet's mother): her family; her nervous + temperament + transmitted to her son; her death [3] + Browning, Mr. Reuben (the poet's uncle), + (incl. Lord Beaconsfield's appreciation of his Latinity) [2] + Browning, Mr. William Shergold (the poet's uncle), + (incl. his literary work) [2] + Browning, Miss Jemima (the poet's aunt) [1] + Browning, Miss (the poet's sister), + (incl. comes to live with her brother) [16] + Browning, Robert: 1812-33--the notion of his Jewish + extraction disproved; + his family anciently established in Dorsetshire; his carelessness + as to genealogical record; account of his grandfather's life + and second marriage; his father's unhappy youth; his paternal + grandmother; + his father's position; comparison of father and son; + the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; + qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard + to health + throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; + great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his + mother; + fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; + extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance + with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in + circulation; + 'Incondita', the production of the twelve-year-old poet; + introduction to Mr. Fox; his boyish love and lasting affection + for Miss Flower; first acquaintance with Shelley's and Keats' + works; + his admiration for Shelley; home education under masters, + his manly accomplishments; his studies chiefly literary; love + of home; + associates of his youth: Arnould and Domett; the Silverthornes; + his choice of poetry as a profession; other possible + professions considered; + admiration for good acting; his father's support in his + literary career; + reads and digests Johnson's Dictionary by way of preparation [37] + Browning, Robert: 1833-35--publication of 'Pauline'; + correspondence with Mr. Fox; the poet's later opinion of it; + characteristics of the poem; Mr. Fox's review of it; other notices; + Browning's visit to Russia; contributions to the 'Monthly + Repository': + his first sonnet; the 'Trifler' (amateur periodical); + a comic defence of debt; preparing to publish 'Paracelsus'; + friendship with + Count de Ripert-Monclar; Browning's treatment of 'Paracelsus'; + the original Preface; John Forster's article on it in the + 'Examiner' [16] + Browning, Robert: 1835-38--removal of the family to Hatcham; + renewed intimacy with his grandfather's second family; + friendly relations with Carlyle; recognition by men of the day; + introduction to Macready; first meeting with Forster; + Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth; at the 'Ion' supper; prospects + of 'Strafford'; + its production and reception; a personal description of him at + this period; + Mr. John Robertson and the 'Westminster Review' [11] + Browning, Robert: 1838-44--first Italian journey; a striking + experience + of the voyage; preparations for writing other tragedies; + meeting with Mr. John Kenyon; appearance of 'Sordello'; + mental developments; 'Pippa Passes'; Alfred Domett on the critics; + 'Bells and Pomegranates'; explanation of its title. + List of the poems; 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', written for + Macready; + Browning's later account and discussion of the breach between him + and Macready; 'Colombe's Birthday'; other dramas; The + 'Dramatic Lyrics'; + 'The Lost Leader'; Browning's life before his second Italian + journey; + in Naples; visit to Mr. Trelawney at Leghorn [19] + Browning, Robert: 1844-55--introduction to Miss Barrett; + his admiration for her poetry; his proposal to her; + reasons for concealing the engagement; their marriage; journey + to Italy; + life at Pisa; Florence; Browning's request for appointment + on a British mission to the Vatican; settling in Casa Guidi; + Fano and Ancona; 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells; + birth of Browning's son, and death of his mother; wanderings + in Italy: + the Baths of Lucca; Venice; friendship with Margaret Fuller Ossoli; + winter in Paris; Carlyle; George Sand. Close friendship + with M. Joseph Milsand; Milsand's appreciation of Browning; + new edition of Browning's poems; 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; + the Essay on Shelley; summer in London; introduction to Dante + G. Rossetti; + again in Florence; production of 'Colombe's Birthday' (1853); + again at Lucca, Mr. and Mrs. W. Story; first winter in Rome; + the Kembles; + again in London (1855): Tennyson, Ruskin [32] + Browning, Robert: 1855-61--publication of 'Men and Women'; + 'Karshook'; 'Two in the Campagna'; another winter in Paris: + Lady Elgin; + legacies to the Brownings from Mr. Kenyon; Mr. Browning's + little son; + a carnival masquerade; Spiritualism; 'Sludge the Medium'; + Count Ginnasi's clairvoyance; at Siena; Walter Savage Landor; + illness of Mrs. Browning; American appreciation of Browning's + works; + his social life in Rome; last winter in Rome; Madame du Quaire; + Mrs. Browning's illness and death; the comet of 1861 [18] + Browning, Robert: 1861-69--Miss Blagden's helpful sympathy; + journey to England; feeling in regard to funeral ceremonies; + established in London with his son; Miss Arabel Barrett; + visit to Biarritz; origin of 'The Ring and the Book'; + his views as to the publication of letters; new edition of his + works, + selection of poems. Residence at Pornic; a meeting at Mr. F. + Palgrave's; + his literary position in 1865; his own estimate of it; + death of his father; with his sister at Le Croisic; + Academic honours: letter to the Master of Balliol (Dr. Scott); + curious circumstance connected with the death of Miss A. Barrett; + at Audierne; the uniform edition of his works; publication of + 'The Ring and the Book'; inspiration of Pompilia [21] + Browning, Robert: 1869-73--'Helen's Tower'; at St.-Aubin; + escape from France during the war (1870); publication of + 'Balaustion's Adventure' and 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'; + 'Herve Riel' sold for the benefit of French sufferers by the war; + 'Fifine at the Fair'; mistaken theories of that work; + 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [8] + Browning, Robert: 1873-78--his manner of life in London; + his love of music; friendship with Miss Egerton-Smith; + summers spent at Mers, Villers, Isle of Arran, and La Saisiaz; + 'Aristophanes' Apology'; 'Pacchiarotto', 'The Inn Album', + the translation of the 'Agamemnon'; description of a visit to + Oxford; + visit to Cambridge; offered the Rectorships of the Universities + of Glasgow and St. Andrews; description of La Saisiaz; + sudden death of Miss Egerton-Smith; the poem 'La Saisiaz': + Browning's position towards Christianity; 'The Two Poets of + Croisic', + and Selections from his Works [13] + Browning, Robert: 1878-81--he revisits Italy; Spluegen; + Asolo; Venice; favourite Alpine retreats; friendly relations + with Mrs. Arthur Bronson; life in Venice; a tragedy at + Saint-Pierre; + the first series of 'Dramatic Idyls'; the second series, + 'Jocoseria', and 'Ferishtah's Fancies' [10] + Browning, Robert: 1881-87--the Browning Society; Browning's + attitude + in regard to it; similar societies in England and America; + wide diffusion of Browning's works in America; lines for the + gravestone + of Mr. Levi Thaxter; President of the New Shakspere Society, + and member of the Wordsworth Society; Honorary President of + the Associated Societies of Edinburgh; appreciation of his + works in Italy; + sonnet to Goldoni; attempt to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, Venice; + Saint-Moritz; Mrs. Bloomfield Moore; at Llangollen; loss of + old friends; + Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academy; publication of + 'Parleyings' [15] + Browning, Robert: his character--constancy in friendship; + optimism and belief in a direct Providence; political principles; + character of his friendships; attitude towards his reviewers + and his readers; attitude towards his works; his method of work; + study of Spanish, Hebrew, and German; conversational powers + and the stores of his memory; nervous peculiarities; his + innate kindliness; + attitude towards women; final views on the Women's Suffrage + question [13] + Browning, Robert: his last years--marriage of his son; + his change of abode; symptoms of declining strength; + new poems, and revision of the old; journey to Italy: + Primiero and Venice; + last winter in England: visit to Balliol College; + last visit to Italy: Asolo once more; proposed purchase of + land there; + the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald'; with his son at Palazzo + Rezzonico; + last illness; death; funeral honours in Italy; 'Asolando' published + on the day of his death; his burial in Westminster Abbey; + the purport and tendency of his work [16] + Browning, Robert: letters to--Bainton, Mr. George (Coventry) [1] + Blagden, Miss Isa [12] + Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [8] + Flower, Miss [2] + Fox, Mr. [4] + Haworth, Miss E. F. [3] + Hickey, Miss E. H. [1] + Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the 'Daily News') [2] + Hill, Mrs. Frank [1] + Keep, Miss [3] + Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [5] + Lee, Miss (Maidstone) [1] + Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [4] + Martin, Mrs. Theodore (afterwards Lady) [2] + Moulton-Barrett, Mr. G. [2] + Quaire, Madame du [1] + Robertson, Mr. John (editor of 'Westminster Review', 1838) [1] + Scott, Rev. Dr. [1] + Skirrow, Mrs. Charles [4] + Smith, Mr. G. M. [3] + Browning, Robert: Works of--'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' [2] + 'A Death in the Desert' [2] + 'Agamemnon' [1] + 'Andrea del Sarto' [1] + 'Aristophanes' Apology' [1] + 'Artemis Prologuizes' [1] + 'Asolando' [5] + 'At the Mermaid' [2] + 'A Woman's Last Word' [1] + 'Bad Dreams' [1] + 'Balaustion's Adventure' [3] + 'Bean Stripes' [1] + 'Beatrice Signorini' [1] + 'Bells and Pomegranates' (incl. meaning of the title, + and list of the dramas and poems) [7] + 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom' [1] + 'Bishop Blougram' [1] + 'By the Fireside' [1] + 'Childe Roland' [1] + 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day' [2] + 'Cleon' [1] + 'Colombe's Birthday' [4] + 'Crescentius, the Pope's Legate' [1] + 'Cristina' [1] + 'Dramatic Idyls' [4] + 'Dramatic Lyrics' [1] + 'Dramatis Personae' [5] + 'Essay on Shelley' [1] + 'Ferishtah's Fancies' [2] + 'Fifine at the Fair' [2] + 'Flute-Music' [1] + 'Goldoni', sonnet to [1] + 'Helen's Tower' (sonnet) [1] + 'Herve Riel' (ballad) [2] + 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' [1] + 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' [1] + 'In a Balcony' [2] + 'In a Gondola' [2] + 'Ivan Ivanovitch' [3] + 'James Lee's Wife' [3] + 'Jocoseria' [1] + 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' [1] + 'King Victor and King Charles' [3] + 'La Saisiaz' [4] + 'Luria' [1] + 'Madhouse Cells' [1] + 'Martin Relph' [1] + 'May and Death' [1] + 'Men and Women' [3] + 'Ned Bratts' [1] + 'Numpholeptos' [1] + 'One Word More' [2] + 'Pacchiarotto' [3] + 'Paracelsus' [8] + 'Parleyings' [2] + 'Pauline' [10] + 'Pippa Passes' (incl. the Preface to) [5] + 'Ponte dell' Angelo' [1] + 'Porphyria's Lover' [1] + 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' [3] + 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [3] + 'Rosny' [1] + 'Saint Martin's Summer' [1] + 'Saul' [1] + 'Sludge the Medium' [2] + 'Sordello' [7] + 'Strafford' [3] + 'The Epistle of Karshish' [1] + 'The Flight of the Duchess' [1] + 'The Inn Album' [3] + 'The Lost Leader' [1] + 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' [1] + 'The Return of the Druses' [3] + 'The Ring and the Book' [3] + 'The Two Poets of Croisic' [2] + 'The Worst of It' [1] + 'Two in the Campagna' [1] + 'White Witchcraft' [1] + 'Why I am a Liberal' (sonnet) [2] + 'Women and Roses' [1] + Browning, Mrs. (the poet's wife: Elizabeth Barrett + Moulton-Barrett): + Browning's introduction to her; her ill health; + the reasons for their secret marriage; causes of her ill health; + happiness of her married life; estrangement from her father; + her visit to Mrs. Theodore Martin; 'Aurora Leigh': her + methods of work; + a legacy from Mr. Kenyon; her feeling about Spiritualism; + success of 'Aurora Leigh'; her sister's illness and death; + her own death; proposed reinterment in Westminster Abbey [14] + Browning, Mrs.: extracts from her letters--on her husband's + devotion; + life in Pisa, and on French literature; Vallombrosa; their + acquaintances + in Florence; their dwelling in Piazza Pitti; 'Father Prout's' cure + for a sore throat; apartments in the Casa Guidi; visits to + Fano and Ancona; + Phelps's production of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; + birth of her son; the effect of his mother's death on her husband; + wanderings in northern Italy; the neighbourhood of Lucca; + Venice; life in Paris (1851); esteem for her husband's family; + description of George Sand; the personal appearance of that lady; + her impression of M. Joseph Milsand; the first performance + of 'Colombe's Birthday' (1853); Rome: death in the Story family; + Mrs. Sartoris and the Kembles; society in Rome; a visit to Mr. + Ruskin; + about 'Penini'; description of a carnival masquerade + (Florence, 1857); + impressions of Landor; tribute to the unselfish character + of her father-in-law; on her husband's work; on the contrast + of his (then) appreciation in England and America; + Massimo d' Azeglio; on her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook); + on the death of Count Cavour [34] + Browning, Mr. Robert Wiedemann Barrett (the poet's son): his + birth; + incidents of his childhood; his pet-name--Penini, Peni, Pen; + in charge of Miss Isa Blagden on his mother's death; + taken to England by his father; manner of his education; + studying art in Antwerp; with his father in Venice (1885); his + marriage; + purchase of the Rezzonico Palace (Venice); death of his father + there [14] + Browning, Mrs. R. Barrett [2] + Browning, Mr. Robert Jardine (Crown Prosecutor in New South + Wales) [1] + Browning Society, the: its establishment [1] + Brownlow, Lord [1] + Bruce, Lady Augusta [1] + Bruce, Lady Charlotte (wife of Mr. F. Locker) [1] + Buckstone, Mr. (actor) [1] + Buloz, M. [1] + Burne Jones, Mr. [2] + Burns, Major (son of the poet) [1] + + Californian Railway time-table edition of Browning's poems [1] + Cambo [1] + Cambridge, Browning's visit to [1] + Campbell Dykes, Mr. J. [6] + Carducci, Countess (Rome) [1] + Carlyle, Mr. Thomas [6] + Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas (incl. anecdote) [2] + Carnarvon, Lord [1] + Carnival masquerade, a [1] + Cartwright, Mr. and Mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3] + Casa Guidi (Browning's residence at Florence) [2] + Cattermole, Mr. [1] + Cavour, Count, death of [1] + Channel, Mr. (afterwards Sir William), and Frank [1] + Chapman & Hall, Messrs. (publishers) [2] + Cholmondeley, Mr. (Condover) [3] + Chorley, Mr. [1] + Cini, Dr. (Venice) [1] + Clairvoyance, an instance of [1] + Coddington, Miss Fannie (afterwards Mrs. R. Barrett Browning) [1] + Colvin, Mr. Sidney [1] + Corkran, Mrs. Fraser [2] + Cornaro, Catharine [3] + Cornhill Magazine: why 'Herve Riel' appeared in it [2] + Corson, Professor [1] + Crosse, Mrs. Andrew [1] + 'Croxall's Fables', Browning's early fondness for [1] + Curtis, Mr. [1] + + Dale, Mr. (actor) [1] + Davidson, Captain (of the 'Norham Castle', 1838) [2] + Davies, Rev. Llewellyn [1] + Debt, Browning's mock defence of (in the 'Trifler') [1] + Dickens, Charles [5] + Domett, Alfred (incl. 'On a certain Critique of Pippa Passes') [3] + Dourlans, M. Gustave [1] + Doyle, Sir Francis H. [1] + Dufferin, Lord [1] + Dulwich Gallery [1] + + Eclectic Review, the (review of Browning's works) [1] + Eden, Mr. Frederic [1] + Egerton-Smith, Miss [2] + Elgin, Lady [3] + Elstree (Macready's residence) [2] + Elton, Mr. (actor) [1] + Engadine, the [2] + Examiner (review of 'Paracelsus') [1] + + Fano [1] + 'Father Prout' (Mr. Mahoney) [1] + Faucit, Miss Helen--as Lady Carlisle in 'Strafford'; as Mildred + in 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; as Colombe in 'Colombe's + Birthday' [3] + Fiori, Margherita (Browning's nurse) [1] + Fisher, Mr. (artist) [1] + Fitzgerald, Mr. Edward [1] + Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [1] + Florence [6] + Flower, Miss [5] + Flower, Mr. Benjamin (editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer') [1] + Fontainebleau [1] + Forster, Mr. John [11] + Fortia, Marquis de [1] + Fox, Miss Caroline [1] + Fox, Miss Sarah [1] + Fox, Mr. W. J. (incl. election for Oldham) [10] + Furnivall, Dr. [5] + + Gaisford, Mr., and Lady Alice [1] + Galuppi, Baldassaro [1] + Gibraltar [1] + Ginnasi, Count (Ravenna) [1] + Giustiniani-Recanati, Palazzo (Venice) [1] + Gladstone, Mr. [1] + Glasgow, University of [1] + Goldoni, Browning's sonnet to [1] + Goltz, M. (Austrian Minister at Rome) [1] + Gosse's 'Personalia' [4] + Green, Mr. [1] + Gressoney Saint-Jean [1] + Guerande (Brittany) [1] + Guidi Palace (Casa Guidi) [1] + Gurney, Rev. Archer [1] + + Hanmer, Sir John (afterwards Lord Hanmer) [1] + Haworth, Miss Euphrasia Fanny [2] + Haworth, Mr. Frederick [1] + Hawthorne, Nathaniel [1] + Hazlitt, Mr. [1] + Heyermans, M. (artist; Antwerp) [1] + Hickey, Miss E. H. [2] + Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the 'Daily News', 1884) [1] + Hood, Mr. Thomas [1] + Horne, Mr. [1] + Hugo, Victor [1] + + Ion, the Ion supper [1] + + Jameson, Mrs. Anna [1] + Jebb-Dyke, Mrs. [1] + Jerningham, Miss [1] + Jersey [1] + Jewsbury, Miss Geraldine [1] + Joachim, Professor [1] + Jones, Mr. Edward Burne [1] + Jones, Rev. Thomas [1] + Jowett, Dr. [3] + + Kean, Mr. Edmund [1] + Keats [1] + Keepsake, The [1] + Kemble, Mrs. Fanny [1] + Kenyon, Mr. John [5] + King, Mr. Joseph [1] + Kirkup, Mr. [2] + Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [2] + + Lamartine, M. de [1] + Lamb, Charles [1] + Landor, Walter Savage [5] + La Saisiaz [2] + Layard, Sir Henry and Lady [2] + Le Croisic (Brittany) [1] + Leigh Hunt [1] + Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [2] + 'Les Charmettes' (Chambery: Rousseau's residence) [1] + Le Strange, Mrs. Guy [1] + Lewis, Miss (Harpton) [1] + Literary Gazette (review of 'Pauline') [1] + Literary World, the Boston, U.S. (on 'Colombe's Birthday') [1] + Llangollen [2] + Llantysilio Church [1] + Lloyd, Captain [1] + Locker, Mr. F. (now Mr. Locker-Lampson) [2] + Lockhart [1] + Lucca [4] + Lyons, Mr. (son of Sir Edmund) [1] + Lytton, Mr. (now Lord) [3] + + Maclise, Mr. (artist) [2] + Macready, Mr. [5] + Macready, Willy (eldest son of the actor): his illustrations + to the 'Pied Piper' [1] + Mahoney, Rev. Francis ('Father Prout') [1] + Manning, Rev. Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) [1] + Manzoni Palace (Venice) [1] + Martin, Lady [3] + Martin, Sir Theodore [1] + Martineau, Miss [4] + Mazzini, Signor [1] + Melvill, Rev. H. (afterwards Canon) [2] + Meredith, Mr. George [1] + Mill, Mr. J. S. [3] + Milnes, Mr. Monckton (afterwards Lord Houghton) [4] + Milsand, M. Joseph [4] + Minich, Dr. (Venice) [1] + Mitford, Miss [3] + Mocenigo, Countess (Venice) [1] + Mohl, Madame [2] + Monthly Repository (incl. Browning's contributions to) [4] + Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield [2] + Morgan, Lady [1] + Morison, Mr. James Cotter [1] + Mortimer, Mr. [2] + Moulton-Barrett, Mr. George [3] + Moxon, Mr. (publisher) [4] + Murray, Miss Alma (actress) [1] + Musset, Alfred and Paul de [1] + + Naples [1] + National Magazine, the: Mrs. Browning's portrait in (1859) [1] + Nencioni, Professor (Florence) [1] + Nettleship, Mr. J. T. [1] + New Shakspere Society [1] + Noel, Mr. Roden [1] + + Ogle, Dr. John [1] + Ogle, Miss (author of 'A Lost Love') [1] + Osbaldistone, Mr. (manager of Covent Garden Theatre, 1836) [1] + Ossoli, Countess Margaret Fuller [1] + Oxford (incl. Browning's visit to, 1877) [2] + + Palgrave, Mr. Francis [1] + Palgrave, Mr. Reginald [1] + Paris [2] + Patterson, Monsignor [1] + Phelps, Mr. (actor) [3] + Pirate-ship, wreck of [1] + Pisa [1] + Poetical contest, a Roman [1] + Pollock, Sir Frederick (1843) [1] + Pornic [2] + Powell, Mr. Thomas [2] + Power, Miss (editor of 'The Keepsake') [1] + Powers, Mr. (American sculptor) [1] + Primiero [1] + Prinsep, Mr. Val [6] + Pritchard, Captain [1] + Procter, Mr. Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall) [4] + + Quaire, Madame du [2] + Quarles' Emblemes [1] + + Ravenna [1] + Ready, the two Misses, preparatory school [3] + Ready, Rev. Thomas (Browning's first schoolmaster) [2] + Regan, Miss [1] + Reid, Mr. Andrew [1] + Relfe, Mr. John (musician) [1] + Rezzonico Palace (Venice), the [2] + Richmond, Rev. Thomas [1] + Ripert-Monclar, Count de [4] + Robertson, Mr. John (editor of 'Westminster Review', 1838) [1] + Robinson, Miss Mary (now Mrs. James Darmesteter) [1] + Rome [2] + Rossetti, Mr. Dante Gabriel (incl. death of his wife) [4] + Ruskin, Mr. [1] + Russell, Lady William [1] + Russell, Mr. Odo (afterwards Lord Ampthill) [2] + + Sabatier, Madame [1] + Saleve, the [2] + Sand, George [2] + Sartoris, Mrs. [4] + Saunders & Otley, Messrs. [2] + Scott, Rev. Dr. (Master of Balliol, 1867) [1] + Scotti, Mr. [1] + Scottish Art Review, the, Mr. Mortimer's 'Note on Browning' in [1] + Seraverra [1] + Sharp, Mr. [4] + Shelley (incl. Browning's Essay on; his grave) [4] + Shrewsbury, Lord [1] + Sidgwick, Mr. A. [1] + Siena [2] + Silverthorne, Mrs. [2] + Simeon, Sir John [1] + Smith, Miss (second wife of the poet's grandfather) [1] + Smith, Mr. George Murray [1] + Southey [1] + Spezzia [1] + Spiritualism (incl. a pretending medium) [2] + Spluegen [1] + St. Andrews University [1] + St.-Aubin (M. Milsand's residence) [2] + St.-Enogat (near Dinard) [1] + St.-Pierre la Chartreuse (incl. a tragic occurrence there) [2] + Stanley, Dean [1] + Stanley, Lady Augusta [1] + Stendhal, Henri [2] + Sterling, Mr. John [1] + Stirling, Mrs. (actress) [1] + Story, Mr. and Mrs. William [7] + Sturtevant, Miss [1] + Sue, Eugene [1] + + Tablets, Memorial [3] + Tait's Magazine [1] + Talfourd, Serjeant [3] + Taylor, Sir Henry [1] + Tennyson, Mr. Alfred (afterwards Lord Tennyson) [2] + Tennyson, Mr. Frederick [1] + Thackeray, Miss Annie [1] + Thackeray, Mr. W. M. [2] + Thaxter, Mrs. (Celia) (Boston, U.S.) [1] + Thaxter, Mr. Levi (Boston, U.S.) [1] + Thomson, Mr. James: his application of the term 'Gothic' + to Browning's work [1] + Tittle, Miss Margaret [1] + Trelawney, Mr. E. J. (1844) [1] + Trifler, The (amateur magazine) [1] + True Sun, the (review of 'Strafford') [1] + + Universo, Hotel dell' (Venice) [1] + + Vallombrosa [1] + Venice [6] + Vigna, Dr. da (Venice) [1] + + Wagner [1] + Warburton, Mr. Eliot [1] + Watts, Dr. [1] + Westminster, Dean of [2] + Widman, Counts [1] + Wiedemann, Mr. William [1] + Williams, Rev. J. D. W. (vicar of Bottisham, Cambs.) [1] + Wilson (Mrs. Browning's maid) [6] + Wilson, Mr. Effingham (publisher) [1] + Wiseman, Mrs. (mother of Cardinal Wiseman) [1] + Wolseley, Lady [1] + Wolseley, Lord [1] + Woolner, Mr. [1] + Wordsworth [3] + Wordsworth Society, the [2] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by +Mrs. Sutherland Orr + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT *** + +***** This file should be named 655.txt or 655.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/5/655/ + +Produced by Alan Light and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry, + 3rd edition. + This book is primarily concerned with Browning's poems. + Advantages: This book is an excellent introduction to Browning. + +Orr, Mrs. Sutherland. Life and Letters of Robert Browning, 2nd edition. + This book is primarily concerned with Browning's life. + Advantages: As a close friend, the author has a good grasp of the facts, + and is meticulous in her treatment of the material. + Disadvantages: As a close friend, the author is sometimes partisan. + +Sharp, William. Life of Robert Browning, 1st edition. + Despite the title, this book is as much a critique of Browning's works + as it is a biography of the poet. + Advantages: Further removed from poet, the author is willing to make + some criticisms of the poet. As an early and frequently quoted work + on the subject, this book is a good resource. + Disadvantages: Due to carelessness on the part of the author + and his publisher, a number of factual and other errors were made. + Although this electronic text has corrected many of the obvious errors, + they are frequent enough to leave misgivings. + + + + + +[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalised. +Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] + + + + + +Life and Letters of Robert Browning +by Mrs. Sutherland Orr +Second Edition + + + + + +Preface + + + +Such letters of Mr. Browning's as appear, whole or in part, +in the present volume have been in most cases given to me by the persons +to whom they were addressed, or copied by Miss Browning from the originals +under her care; but I owe to the daughter of the Rev. W. J. Fox +-- Mrs. Bridell Fox -- those written to her father and to Miss Flower; +the two interesting extracts from her father's correspondence with herself +and Mr. Browning's note to Mr. Robertson. + +For my general material I have been largely indebted to Miss Browning. +Her memory was the only existing record of her brother's boyhood and youth. +It has been to me an unfailing as well as always accessible authority +for that subsequent period of his life which I could only know +in disconnected facts or his own fragmentary reminiscences. +It is less true, indeed, to say that she has greatly helped me +in writing this short biography than that without her help +it could never have been undertaken. + +I thank my friends Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell and Miss Hickey +for their invaluable assistance in preparing the book for, +and carrying it through the press; and I acknowledge with real gratitude +the advantages derived by it from Mr. Dykes Campbell's +large literary experience in his very careful final revision of the proofs. + + A. Orr. +April 22, 1891. + + + + + + +Contents + + + +Chapter 1 + Origin of the Browning Family -- Robert Browning's Grandfather -- + His position and Character -- His first and second Marriage -- + Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father -- + Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother + -- Existing Evidence against it -- The Grandmother's Portrait. + +Chapter 2 + Robert Browning's Father -- His Position in Life -- + Comparison between him and his Son -- Tenderness towards his Son -- + Outline of his Habits and Character -- His Death -- + Significant Newspaper Paragraph -- Letter of Mr. Locker-Lampson -- + Robert Browning's Mother -- Her Character and Antecedents -- + Their Influence upon her Son -- Nervous Delicacy imparted + to both her Children -- Its special Evidences in her Son. + +Chapter 3 +1812-1826 + Birth of Robert Browning -- His Childhood and Schooldays -- + Restless Temperament -- Brilliant Mental Endowments -- + Incidental Peculiarities -- Strong Religious Feeling -- + Passionate Attachment to his Mother; Grief at first Separation -- + Fondness for Animals -- Experiences of School Life -- Extensive Reading -- + Early Attempts in Verse -- Letter from his Father concerning them -- + Spurious Poems in Circulation -- `Incondita' -- Mr. Fox -- Miss Flower. + +Chapter 4 +1826-1833 + First Impressions of Keats and Shelley -- Prolonged Influence of Shelley -- + Details of Home Education -- Its Effects -- Youthful Restlessness -- + Counteracting Love of Home -- Early Friendships: Alfred Domett, + Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes -- Choice of Poetry as a Profession -- + Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning them -- + Interest in Art -- Love of good Theatrical Performances -- + Talent for Acting -- Final Preparation for Literary Life. + +Chapter 5 +1833-1835 + `Pauline' -- Letters to Mr. Fox -- Publication of the Poem; + chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics -- + Mr. Fox's Review in the `Monthly Repository'; other Notices -- + Russian Journey -- Desired diplomatic Appointment -- + Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of Appearance -- `The Trifler' -- + M. de Ripert-Monclar -- `Paracelsus' -- Letters to Mr. Fox concerning it; + its Publication -- Incidental Origin of `Paracelsus'; + its inspiring Motive; its Relation to `Pauline' -- + Mr. Fox's Review of it in the `Monthly Repository' -- + Article in the `Examiner' by John Forster. + +Chapter 6 +1835-1838 + Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars -- Renewed Intercourse + with the second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather -- + Reuben Browning -- William Shergold Browning -- Visitors at Hatcham -- + Thomas Carlyle -- Social Life -- New Friends and Acquaintance -- + Introduction to Macready -- New Year's Eve at Elm Place -- + Introduction to John Forster -- Miss Fanny Haworth -- Miss Martineau -- + Serjeant Talfourd -- The `Ion' Supper -- `Strafford' -- + Relations with Macready -- Performance of `Strafford' -- + Letters concerning it from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower -- + Personal Glimpses of Robert Browning -- Rival Forms + of Dramatic Inspiration -- Relation of `Strafford' to `Sordello' -- + Mr. Robertson and the `Westminster Review'. + +Chapter 7 +1838-1841 + First Italian Journey -- Letters to Miss Haworth -- Mr. John Kenyon -- + `Sordello' -- Letter to Miss Flower -- `Pippa Passes' -- + `Bells and Pomegranates'. + +Chapter 8 +1841-1844 + `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' -- Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady Martin -- + Charles Dickens -- Other Dramas and Minor Poems -- + Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower -- + Second Italian Journey; Naples -- E. J. Trelawney -- Stendhal. + +Chapter 9 +1844-1849 + Introduction to Miss Barrett -- Engagement -- Motives for Secrecy -- + Marriage -- Journey to Italy -- Extract of Letter from Mr. Fox -- + Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford -- Life at Pisa -- + Vallombrosa -- Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle -- + Proposed British Mission to the Vatican -- Father Prout -- Palazzo Guidi -- + Fano; Ancona -- `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. + +Chapter 10 +1849-1852 + Death of Mr. Browning's Mother -- Birth of his Son -- + Mrs. Browning's Letters continued -- Baths of Lucca -- Florence again -- + Venice -- Margaret Fuller Ossoli -- Visit to England -- Winter in Paris -- + Carlyle -- George Sand -- Alfred de Musset. + +Chapter 11 +1852-1855 + M. Joseph Milsand -- His close Friendship with Mr. Browning; + Mrs. Browning's Impression of him -- New Edition of Mr. Browning's Poems -- + `Christmas Eve and Easter Day' -- `Essay' on Shelley -- Summer in London -- + Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Florence; secluded Life -- + Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Browning -- `Colombe's Birthday' -- + Baths of Lucca -- Mrs. Browning's Letters -- Winter in Rome -- + Mr. and Mrs. Story -- Mrs. Sartoris -- Mrs. Fanny Kemble -- + Summer in London -- Tennyson -- Ruskin. + +Chapter 12 +1855-1858 + `Men and Women' -- `Karshook' -- `Two in the Campagna' -- Winter in Paris; + Lady Elgin -- `Aurora Leigh' -- Death of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett -- + Penini -- Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Browning -- + The Florentine Carnival -- Baths of Lucca -- Spiritualism -- + Mr. Kirkup; Count Ginnasi -- Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox -- Havre. + +Chapter 13 +1858-1861 + Mrs. Browning's Illness -- Siena -- Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Leighton + -- Mrs. Browning's Letters continued -- Walter Savage Landor -- + Winter in Rome -- Mr. Val Prinsep -- Friends in Rome: + Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright -- Multiplying Social Relations -- Massimo d'Azeglio + -- Siena again -- Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister -- + Mr. Browning's Occupations -- Madame du Quaire -- + Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death. + +Chapter 14 +1861-1863 + Miss Blagden -- Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton + -- His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies -- Establishment in London -- + Plan of Life -- Letter to Madame du Quaire -- Miss Arabel Barrett -- + Biarritz -- Letters to Miss Blagden -- Conception of `The Ring and the Book' + -- Biographical Indiscretion -- New Edition of his Works -- + Mr. and Mrs. Procter. + +Chapter 15 +1863-1869 + Pornic -- `James Lee's Wife' -- Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's -- + Letters to Miss Blagden -- His own Estimate of his Work -- + His Father's Illness and Death; Miss Browning -- Le Croisic -- + Academic Honours; Letter to the Master of Balliol -- + Death of Miss Barrett -- Audierne -- Uniform Edition of his Works -- + His rising Fame -- `Dramatis Personae' -- `The Ring and the Book'; + Character of Pompilia. + +Chapter 16 +1869-1873 + Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower -- Scotland; Visit to Lady Ashburton -- + Letters to Miss Blagden -- St.-Aubin; The Franco-Prussian War -- + `Herve Riel' -- Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith -- `Balaustion's Adventure'; + `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' -- `Fifine at the Fair' -- + Mistaken Theories of Mr. Browning's Work -- St.-Aubin; + `Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. + +Chapter 17 +1873-1878 + London Life -- Love of Music -- Miss Egerton-Smith -- + Periodical Nervous Exhaustion -- Mers; `Aristophanes' Apology' -- + `Agamemnon' -- `The Inn Album' -- `Pacchiarotto and other Poems' -- + Visits to Oxford and Cambridge -- Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald -- + St. Andrews; Letter from Professor Knight -- In the Savoyard Mountains -- + Death of Miss Egerton-Smith -- `La Saisiaz'; `The Two Poets of Croisic' -- + Selections from his Works. + +Chapter 18 +1878-1884 + He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald -- Venice -- + Favourite Alpine Retreats -- Mrs. Arthur Bronson -- Life in Venice -- + A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre -- Mr. Cholmondeley -- Mr. Browning's + Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow -- + `Dramatic Idyls' -- `Jocoseria' -- `Ferishtah's Fancies'. + +Chapter 19 +1881-1887 + The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey -- + His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald -- + Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter -- Letter to Miss Hickey; `Strafford' -- + Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies -- Letters to Professor Knight -- + Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni -- The Goldoni Sonnet -- + Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni -- Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow -- + Mrs. Bloomfield Moore -- Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin -- + Loss of old Friends -- Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy -- + `Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day'. + +Chapter 20 + Constancy to Habit -- Optimism -- Belief in Providence -- + Political Opinions -- His Friendships -- Reverence for Genius -- + Attitude towards his Public -- Attitude towards his Work -- + Habits of Work -- His Reading -- Conversational Powers -- + Impulsiveness and Reserve -- Nervous Peculiarities -- His Benevolence -- + His Attitude towards Women. + +Chapter 21 +1887-1889 + Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning -- Removal to De Vere Gardens -- + Symptoms of failing Strength -- New Poems; New Edition of his Works -- + Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady Martin -- + Primiero and Venice -- Letters to Miss Keep -- The last Year in London -- + Asolo -- Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. + +Chapter 22 +1889 + Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo -- Venice -- + Letter to Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett -- Lines in the `Athenaeum' -- + Letter to Miss Keep -- Illness -- Death -- Funeral Ceremonial at Venice -- + Publication of `Asolando' -- Interment in Poets' Corner. + +Conclusion + +Index + + + +Illustrations {not included in ASCII text} + +Portrait of Robert Browning (1889) +Mr. Browning's Study in De Vere Gardens + + + + + +----------------------------------- +Life and Letters of Robert Browning +----------------------------------- + + + + + +Chapter 1 + + Origin of the Browning Family -- Robert Browning's Grandfather -- + His position and Character -- His first and second Marriage -- + Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father -- + Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother + -- Existing Evidence against it -- The Grandmother's Portrait. + + + +A belief was current in Mr. Browning's lifetime that he had Jewish blood +in his veins. It received outward support from certain accidents of his life, +from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature, +from his friendship for various members of the Jewish community in London. +It might well have yielded to the fact of his never claiming the kinship, +which could not have existed without his knowledge, and which, +if he had known it, he would, by reason of these very sympathies, +have been the last person to disavow. The results of more recent +and more systematic inquiry have shown the belief to be unfounded. + +Our poet sprang, on the father's side, from an obscure or, +as family tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock +settled, at an early period of our history, in the south, +and probably also south-west, of England. A line of Brownings +owned the manors of Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond, +in north-west Dorsetshire; their last representative disappeared -- +or was believed to do so -- in the time of Henry VII., +their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of Ilchester, +who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different parts +of the country: in two cases with the affix of `esquire', in two also, +though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge, +where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear. +Its cradle, as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge, +on the Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors, +of the third and fourth generations, held, as we understand, +a modest but independent social position. + +-- +* I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others + referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles, + to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall. +-- + +This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better +with our impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree +which more palpably connected him with the `knightly' and `squirely' families +whose name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life +to which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that genius +and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense, +the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements +which entered into its growth were racial as well as cultural, +and inherited as well as absorbed, the evidence of its strong +natural or physical basis remains undisturbed. + +Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in the matter. +He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical past +which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of his family. +He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to him +from his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to do so, +a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle, +in years gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason +to think about his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason +to care about them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case, +the most important fact in his family history. + + Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi, + Suis le seigneur de Conti, + +he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally +questioned him about it. + +Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning's grandfather, +also a Robert Browning, who obtained through Lord Shaftesbury's influence +a clerkship in the Bank of England, and entered on it when barely twenty, +in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose to the position of +Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an important one, +and which brought him into contact with the leading financiers of the day. +He became also a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery Company, +and took part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riots of 1789. +He was an able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman, +very much of the provincial type; his literary tastes being limited +to the Bible and `Tom Jones', both of which he is said to have read through +once a year. He possessed a handsome person and, probably, +a vigorous constitution, since he lived to the age of eighty-four, +though frequently tormented by gout; a circumstance which may help +to account for his not having seen much of his grandchildren, +the poet and his sister; we are indeed told that he particularly dreaded +the lively boy's vicinity to his afflicted foot. He married, in 1778, +Margaret, daughter of a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with Miss Seymour; +and who was born in the West Indies and had inherited property there. +They had three children: Robert, the poet's father; a daughter, +who lived an uneventful life and plays no part in the family history; +and another son who died an infant. The Creole mother died also +when her eldest boy was only seven years old, and passed out of his memory +in all but an indistinct impression of having seen her lying in her coffin. +Five years later the widower married a Miss Smith, who gave him +a large family. + +This second marriage of Mr. Browning's was a critical event +in the life of his eldest son; it gave him, to all appearance, +two step-parents instead of one. There could have been little sympathy +between his father and himself, for no two persons were ever more unlike, +but there was yet another cause for the systematic unkindness +under which the lad grew up. Mr. Browning fell, as a hard man easily does, +greatly under the influence of his second wife, and this influence +was made by her to subserve the interests of a more than natural jealousy +of her predecessor. An early instance of this was her banishing +the dead lady's portrait to a garret, on the plea that her husband +did not need two wives. The son could be no burden upon her +because he had a little income, derived from his mother's brother; +but this, probably, only heightened her ill-will towards him. +When he was old enough to go to a University, and very desirous of going -- +when, moreover, he offered to do so at his own cost -- +she induced his father to forbid it, because, she urged, +they could not afford to send their other sons to college. +An earlier ambition of his had been to become an artist; +but when he showed his first completed picture to his father, the latter +turned away and refused to look at it. He gave himself the finishing stroke +in the parental eyes, by throwing up a lucrative employment +which he had held for a short time on his mother's West Indian property, +in disgust at the system of slave labour which was still in force there; +and he paid for this unpractical conduct as soon as he was of age, +by the compulsory reimbursement of all the expenses which his father, +up to that date, had incurred for him; and by the loss +of his mother's fortune, which, at the time of her marriage, had not been +settled upon her. It was probably in despair of doing anything better, +that, soon after this, in his twenty-second year, he also became a clerk +in the Bank of England. He married and settled in Camberwell, in 1811; +his son and daughter were born, respectively, in 1812 and 1814. +He became a widower in 1849; and when, four years later, he had completed +his term of service at the Bank, he went with his daughter to Paris, +where they resided until his death in 1866. + +Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a conviction, +that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole +in the strict sense of the term, that of a person born of white parents +in the West Indies, and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood +passed from her to her son and grandson. Such an occurrence was, +on the face of it, not impossible, and would be absolutely unimportant +to my mind, and, I think I may add, to that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. +The poet and his father were what we know them, and if negro blood +had any part in their composition, it was no worse for them, +and so much the better for the negro. But many persons among us +are very averse to the idea of such a cross; I believe its assertion, +in the present case, to be entirely mistaken; I prefer, therefore, +touching on the facts alleged in favour of it, to passing them over +in a silence which might be taken to mean indifference, +but might also be interpreted into assent. + +We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life, +that a nephew who saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian. +He neither had nor could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England +at the time specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior +was residing on his mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, +his appearance was held to justify his being placed in church +among the coloured members of the congregation. We are assured +in the strongest terms that the story has no foundation, +and this by a gentleman whose authority in all matters concerning +the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise accepted as conclusive. +If the anecdote were true it would be a singular circumstance +that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing negro heads, +and thus obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association with them. + +I do not know the exact physical indications by which a dark strain +is perceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes, +hair, and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons +who in the present case are supposed to have borne them. +The poet's father had light blue eyes and, I am assured by those +who knew him best, a clear, ruddy complexion. His appearance +induced strangers passing him in the Paris streets to remark, +`C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whiteness of Miss Browning's skin +was modified in her brother by a sallow tinge sufficiently explained +by frequent disturbance of the liver; but it never affected +the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair, +which grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black, +is spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth, as golden. +It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his early friend Mr. Fox, +who grew up in the little social circle to which he belonged, +never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him; +and a lady who made his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year, +wrote a sonnet upon him, beginning with these words: + + Thy brow is calm, young Poet -- pale and clear + As a moonlighted statue. + +The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve, +however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing +on the main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities +concerning it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman +appears in a merely contracted form as that of one of the oldest families +naturalized in Venice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; +and, by a strange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace +now owned by Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. +The present Contessa Widman has lately restored her own palace, +which was falling into ruin. + +That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrage +to her husband's second wife, has hung for many years +in her grandson's dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. +It represents a stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; +and if the face or hair betrays any indication of possible dark blood, +it is imperceptible to the general observer, and must be +of too slight and fugitive a nature to enter into the discussion. +A long curl touches one shoulder. One hand rests upon +a copy of Thomson's `Seasons', which was held to be +the proper study and recreation of cultivated women in those days. +The picture was painted by Wright of Derby. + +A brother of this lady was an adventurous traveller, +and was said to have penetrated farther into the interior of Africa +than any other European of his time. His violent death will be found recorded +in a singular experience of the poet's middle life. + + + + +Chapter 2 + + Robert Browning's Father -- His Position in Life -- + Comparison between him and his Son -- Tenderness towards his Son -- + Outline of his Habits and Character -- His Death -- + Significant Newspaper Paragraph -- Letter of Mr. Locker-Lampson -- + Robert Browning's Mother -- Her Character and Antecedents -- + Their Influence upon her Son -- Nervous Delicacy imparted + to both her Children -- Its special Evidences in her Son. + + + +It was almost a matter of course that Robert Browning's father +should be disinclined for bank work. We are told, and can easily imagine, +that he was not so good an official as the grandfather; +we know that he did not rise so high, nor draw so large a salary. +But he made the best of his position for his family's sake, +and it was at that time both more important and more lucrative +than such appointments have since become. Its emoluments could be increased +by many honourable means not covered by the regular salary. +The working-day was short, and every additional hour's service well paid. +To be enrolled on the night-watch was also very remunerative; +there were enormous perquisites in pens, paper, and sealing-wax.* +Mr. Browning availed himself of these opportunities of adding to his income, +and was thus enabled, with the help of his private means, to gratify +his scholarly and artistic tastes, and give his children the benefit +of a very liberal education -- the one distinct ideal of success in life +which such a nature as his could form. Constituted as he was, +he probably suffered very little through the paternal unkindness +which had forced him into an uncongenial career. Its only palpable result +was to make him a more anxiously indulgent parent when his own time came. + +-- +* I have been told that, far from becoming careless in the use of these things + from his practically unbounded command of them, he developed for them + an almost superstitious reverence. He could never endure + to see a scrap of writing-paper wasted. +-- + +Many circumstances conspired to secure to the coming poet +a happier childhood and youth than his father had had. His path was to be +smoothed not only by natural affection and conscientious care, +but by literary and artistic sympathy. The second Mr. Browning differed, +in certain respects, as much from the third as from the first. +There were, nevertheless, strong points in which, if he did not resemble, +he at least distinctly foreshadowed him; and the genius of the one +would lack some possible explanation if we did not recognize in great measure +its organized material in the other. Much, indeed, that was genius in the son +existed as talent in the father. The moral nature of the younger man +diverged from that of the older, though retaining strong points of similarity; +but the mental equipments of the two differed far less in themselves than in +the different uses to which temperament and circumstances trained them. + +The most salient intellectual characteristic of Mr. Browning senior +was his passion for reading. In his daughter's words, +`he read in season, and out of season;' and he not only read, but remembered. +As a schoolboy, he knew by heart the first book of the `Iliad', +and all the odes of Horace; and it shows how deeply +the classical part of his training must have entered into him, +that he was wont, in later life, to soothe his little boy to sleep +by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. It was one of his amusements at school +to organize Homeric combats among the boys, in which the fighting +was carried on in the manner of the Greeks and Trojans, +and he and his friend Kenyon would arm themselves with swords and shields, +and hack at each other lustily, exciting themselves to battle +by insulting speeches derived from the Homeric text.* + +-- +* This anecdote is partly quoted from Mrs. Andrew Crosse, + who has introduced it into her article `John Kenyon and his Friends', + `Temple Bar', April 1890. She herself received it from Mr. Dykes Campbell. +-- + +Mr. Browning had also an extraordinary power of versifying, +and taught his son from babyhood the words he wished him to remember, +by joining them to a grotesque rhyme; the child learned +all his Latin declensions in this way. His love of art had been proved +by his desire to adopt it as a profession; his talent for it +was evidenced by the life and power of the sketches, often caricatures, +which fell from his pen or pencil as easily as written words. +Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a very early +elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes +(now in the possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) +through which his grandfather impressed upon him the names and position +of the principal bones of the human body. + +Even more remarkable than his delight in reading was the manner in which +Mr. Browning read. He carried into it all the preciseness of the scholar. +It was his habit when he bought a book -- which was generally +an old one allowing of this addition -- to have some pages of blank paper +bound into it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, +or such other supplementary matter as would enhance the interest, +or assist the mastering, of its contents; all written in a clear and firm +though by no means formal handwriting. More than one book thus treated by him +has passed through my hands, leaving in me, it need hardly be said, +a stronger impression of the owner's intellectual quality +than the acquisition by him of the finest library could have conveyed. +One of the experiences which disgusted him with St. Kitt's +was the frustration by its authorities of an attempt he was making +to teach a negro boy to read, and the understanding +that all such educative action was prohibited. + +In his faculties and attainments, as in his pleasures and appreciations, +he showed the simplicity and genuineness of a child. He was not only +ready to amuse, he could always identify himself with children, +his love for whom never failed him in even his latest years. +His more than childlike indifference to pecuniary advantages had been shown +in early life. He gave another proof of it after his wife's death, +when he declined a proposal, made to him by the Bank of England, +to assist in founding one of its branch establishments in Liverpool. +He never indeed, personally, cared for money, except as a means +of acquiring old, i.e. rare books, for which he had, +as an acquaintance declared, the scent of a hound and the snap of a bulldog. +His eagerness to possess such treasures was only matched by the generosity +with which he parted with them; and his daughter well remembers +the feeling of angry suspicion with which she and her brother noted +the periodical arrival of a certain visitor who would be closeted +with their father for hours, and steal away before the supper time, +when the family would meet, with some precious parcel of books or prints +under his arm. + +It is almost superfluous to say that he was indifferent to creature comforts. +Miss Browning was convinced that, if on any occasion she had said to him, +`There will be no dinner to-day,' he would only have looked up from his book +to reply, `All right, my dear, it is of no consequence.' +In his bank-clerk days, when he sometimes dined in Town, +he left one restaurant with which he was not otherwise dissatisfied, +because the waiter always gave him the trouble of specifying +what he would have to eat. A hundred times that trouble +would not have deterred him from a kindly act. Of his goodness of heart, +indeed, many distinct instances might be given; but even +this scanty outline of his life has rendered them superfluous. + +Mr. Browning enjoyed splendid physical health. His early love of reading +had not precluded a wholesome enjoyment of athletic sports; +and he was, as a boy, the fastest runner and best base-ball player +in his school. He died, like his father, at eighty-four (or rather, +within a few days of eighty-five), but, unlike him, he had never been ill; +a French friend exclaimed when all was over, `Il n'a jamais e/te/ vieux.' +His faculties were so unclouded up to the last moment +that he could watch himself dying, and speculate on the nature of the change +which was befalling him. `What do you think death is, Robert?' +he said to his son; `is it a fainting, or is it a pang?' +A notice of his decease appeared in an American newspaper. +It was written by an unknown hand, and bears a stamp of genuineness +which renders the greater part of it worth quoting. + +== +`He was not only a ruddy, active man, with fine hair, +that retained its strength and brownness to the last, +but he had a courageous spirit and a remarkably intelligent mind. +He was a man of the finest culture, and was often, and never vainly, +consulted by his son Robert concerning the more recondite facts relating +to the old characters, whose bones that poet liked so well to disturb. +His knowledge of old French, Spanish, and Italian literature was wonderful. +The old man went smiling and peaceful to his long rest, +preserving his faculties to the last, insomuch that the physician, +astonished at his continued calmness and good humour, turned to his daughter, +and said in a low voice, "Does this gentleman know that he is dying?" +The daughter said in a voice which the father could hear, "He knows it;" +and the old man said with a quiet smile, "Death is no enemy in my eyes." +His last words were spoken to his son Robert, who was fanning him, +"I fear I am wearying you, dear."' +== + +Four years later one of his English acquaintances in Paris, +Mr. Frederick Locker, now Mr. Locker-Lampson, wrote to Robert Browning +as follows: + +== + Dec. 26, 1870. + +My dear Browning, -- I have always thought that you or Miss Browning, +or some other capable person, should draw up a sketch of your excellent father +so that, hereafter, it might be known what an interesting man he was. + +I used often to meet you in Paris, at Lady Elgin's. She had a genuine taste +for poetry, and she liked being read to, and I remember you gave her +a copy of Keats' poems, and you used often to read his poetry to her. +Lady Elgin died in 1860, and I think it was in that year +that Lady Charlotte and I saw the most of Mr. Browning.* +He was then quite an elderly man, if years could make him so, +but he had so much vivacity of manner, and such simplicity +and freshness of mind, that it was difficult to think him old. + +-- +* Mr. Locker was then married to Lady Charlotte Bruce, Lady Elgin's daughter. +-- + +I remember, he and your sister lived in an apartment in the Rue de Grenelle, +St. Germain, in quite a simple fashion, much in the way that most people live +in Paris, and in the way that all sensible people would wish to live +all over the world. + +Your father and I had at least one taste and affection in common. +He liked hunting the old bookstalls on the `quais', +and he had a great love and admiration for Hogarth; and he possessed +several of Hogarth's engravings, some in rare and early states of the plate; +and he would relate with glee the circumstances under which +he had picked them up, and at so small a price too! However, +he had none of the `petit-maitre' weakness of the ordinary collector, +which is so common, and which I own to! -- such as an infatuation +for tall copies, and wide margins. + +I remember your father was fond of drawing in a rough and ready fashion; +he had plenty of talent, I should think not very great cultivation; +but quite enough to serve his purpose, and to amuse his friends. +He had a thoroughly lively and HEALTHY interest in your poetry, +and he showed me some of your boyish attempts at versification. + +Taking your dear father altogether, I quite believe him to have been +one of those men -- interesting men -- whom the world never hears of. +Perhaps he was shy -- at any rate he was much less known +than he ought to have been; and now, perhaps, he only remains +in the recollection of his family, and of one or two superior people +(like myself!) who were capable of appreciating him. My dear Browning, +I really hope you will draw up a slight sketch of your father +before it is too late. + Yours, + Frederick Locker. +== + +The judgments thus expressed twenty years ago are cordially re-stated +in the letter in which Mr. Locker-Lampson authorizes me to publish them. +The desired memoir was never written; but the few details +which I have given of the older Mr. Browning's life and character +may perhaps stand for it. + +With regard to the `strict dissent' with which her parents have been taxed, +Miss Browning writes to me: `My father was born and educated +in the Church of England, and, for many years before his death, +lived in her communion. He became a Dissenter in middle life, +and my mother, born and brought up in the Kirk of Scotland, became one also; +but they could not be called bigoted, since we always in the evening attended +the preaching of the Rev. Henry Melvill* (afterwards Canon of St. Paul's), +whose sermons Robert much admired.'** + +-- +* At Camden Chapel, Camberwell. +** Mr. Browning was much interested, in later years, in hearing Canon, + perhaps then already Archdeacon, Farrar extol his eloquence and ask + whether he had known him. Mr. Ruskin also spoke of him with admiration. +-- + +Little need be said about the poet's mother. She was spoken of by Carlyle +as `the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman.' Mr. Kenyon declared +that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made it +wherever they were. But her character was all resumed in her son's words, +spoken with the tremulous emotion which so often accompanied +his allusion to those he had loved and lost: `She was a divine woman.' +She was Scotch on the maternal side, and her kindly, gentle, +but distinctly evangelical Christianity must have been derived +from that source. Her father, William Wiedemann, a ship-owner, +was a Hamburg German settled in Dundee, and has been described by Mr. Browning +as an accomplished draughtsman and musician. She herself had nothing +of the artist about her, though we hear of her sometimes playing the piano; +in all her goodness and sweetness she seems to have been +somewhat matter-of-fact. But there is abundant indirect evidence +of Mr. Browning's love of music having come to him through her, +and we are certainly justified in holding the Scottish-German descent +as accountable, in great measure at least, for the metaphysical quality +so early apparent in the poet's mind, and of which we find no evidence +in that of his father. His strong religious instincts must have been derived +from both parents, though most anxiously fostered by his mother. + +There is yet another point on which Mrs. Browning must have influenced +the life and destinies of her son, that of physical health, +or, at least, nervous constitution. She was a delicate woman, +very anaemic during her later years, and a martyr to neuralgia, which was +perhaps a symptom of this condition. The acute ailment reproduced itself +in her daughter in spite of an otherwise vigorous constitution. +With the brother, the inheritance of suffering was not less surely present, +if more difficult to trace. We have been accustomed to speaking of him +as a brilliantly healthy man; he was healthy, even strong, +in many essential respects. Until past the age of seventy +he could take long walks without fatigue, and endure an amount +of social and general physical strain which would have tried many younger men. +He carried on until the last a large, if not always serious, correspondence, +and only within the latest months, perhaps weeks of his life, +did his letters even suggest that physical brain-power was failing him. +He had, within the limits which his death has assigned to it, +a considerable recuperative power. His consciousness of health was vivid, +so long as he was well; and it was only towards the end +that the faith in his probable length of days occasionally deserted him. +But he died of no acute disease, more than seven years younger +than his father, having long carried with him external marks of age +from which his father remained exempt. Till towards the age of forty +he suffered from attacks of sore-throat, not frequent, but of an angry kind. +He was constantly troubled by imperfect action of the liver, +though no doctor pronounced the evil serious. I have spoken of this +in reference to his complexion. During the last twenty years, if not +for longer, he rarely spent a winter without a suffocating cold and cough; +within the last five, asthmatic symptoms established themselves; +and when he sank under what was perhaps his first real attack of bronchitis +it was not because the attack was very severe, but because the heart +was exhausted. The circumstances of his death recalled that of his mother; +and we might carry the sad analogy still farther in his increasing pallor, +and the slow and not strong pulse which always characterized him. +This would perhaps be a mistake. It is difficult to reconcile any idea +of bloodlessness with the bounding vitality of his younger body and mind. +Any symptom of organic disease could scarcely, in his case, +have been overlooked. But so much is certain: he was conscious +of what he called a nervousness of nature which neither father nor grandfather +could have bequeathed to him. He imputed to this, or, in other words, +to an undue physical sensitiveness to mental causes of irritation, +his proneness to deranged liver, and the asthmatic conditions +which he believed, rightly or wrongly, to be produced by it. +He was perhaps mistaken in some of his inferences, but he was not mistaken +in the fact. He had the pleasures as well as the pains +of this nervous temperament; its quick response to every congenial stimulus +of physical atmosphere, and human contact. It heightened the enjoyment, +perhaps exaggerated the consciousness of his physical powers. +It also certainly in his later years led him to overdraw them. +Many persons have believed that he could not live without society; +a prolonged seclusion from it would, for obvious reasons, +have been unsuited to him. But the excited gaiety which to the last +he carried into every social gathering was often primarily +the result of a moral and physical effort which his temperament prompted, +but his strength could not always justify. Nature avenged herself +in recurrent periods of exhaustion, long before the closing stage had set in. + +I shall subsequently have occasion to trace this nervous impressibility +through various aspects and relations of his life; all I now seek to show +is that this healthiest of poets and most real of men was not compounded +of elements of pure health, and perhaps never could have been so. +It might sound grotesque to say that only a delicate woman +could have been the mother of Robert Browning. The fact remains +that of such a one, and no other, he was born; and we may imagine, +without being fanciful, that his father's placid intellectual powers +required for their transmutation into poetic genius +just this infusion of a vital element not only charged +with other racial and individual qualities, but physically and morally +more nearly allied to pain. Perhaps, even for his happiness as a man, +we could not have wished it otherwise. + + + + +Chapter 3 + +1812-1826 + + Birth of Robert Browning -- His Childhood and Schooldays -- + Restless Temperament -- Brilliant Mental Endowments -- + Incidental Peculiarities -- Strong Religious Feeling -- + Passionate Attachment to his Mother; Grief at first Separation -- + Fondness for Animals -- Experiences of School Life -- Extensive Reading -- + Early Attempts in Verse -- Letter from his Father concerning them -- + Spurious Poems in Circulation -- `Incondita' -- Mr. Fox -- Miss Flower. + + + +Robert Browning was born, as has been often repeated, at Camberwell, +on May 7, 1812, soon after a great comet had disappeared from the sky. +He was a handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed +an unresting activity and a fiery temper. He clamoured for occupation +from the moment he could speak. His mother could only keep him quiet +when once he had emerged from infancy by telling him stories +-- doubtless Bible stories -- while holding him on her knee. +His energies were of course destructive till they had found +their proper outlet; but we do not hear of his ever having destroyed anything +for the mere sake of doing so. His first recorded piece of mischief +was putting a handsome Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; +but the motive, which he was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: +`A pitty baze [pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon came to his rescue. +It has often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking +round and round the dining-room table supporting himself by his hands, +when he was still so small that his head was scarcely above it. +He remembered having entertained his mother in the very first walk +he was considered old enough to take with her, by a fantastic account +of his possessions in houses, &c., of which the topographical details +elicited from her the remark, `Why, sir, you are quite a geographer.' +And though this kind of romancing is common enough among intelligent children, +it distinguishes itself in this case by the strong impression +which the incident had left on his own mind. It seems to have been +a first real flight of dramatic fancy, confusing his identity +for the time being. + +The power of inventing did not, however, interfere with +his readiness to learn, and the facility with which he acquired +whatever knowledge came in his way had, on one occasion, inconvenient results. +A lady of reduced fortunes kept a small elementary school for boys, +a stone's-throw from his home; and he was sent to it as a day boarder +at so tender an age that his parents, it is supposed, had no object in view +but to get rid of his turbulent activity for an hour or two +every morning and afternoon. Nevertheless, his proficiency +in reading and spelling was soon so much ahead of that of the biggest boy, +that complaints broke out among the mammas, who were sure +there was not fair play. Mrs. ---- was neglecting her other pupils +for the sake of `bringing on Master Browning;' and the poor lady +found it necessary to discourage Master Browning's attendance +lest she should lose the remainder of her flock. This, at least, +was the story as he himself remembered it. According to Miss Browning +his instructress did not yield without a parting shot. She retorted +on the discontented parents that, if she could give their children +`Master Browning's intellect', she would have no difficulty +in satisfying them. After this came the interlude of home-teaching, +in which all his elementary knowledge must have been gained. +As an older child he was placed with two Misses Ready, who prepared boys +for entering their brother's (the Rev. Thomas Ready's) school; +and in due time he passed into the latter, where he remained +up to the age of fourteen. + +He seems in those early days to have had few playmates beyond his sister, +two years younger than himself, and whom his irrepressible spirit +must sometimes have frightened or repelled. Nor do we hear anything +of childish loves; and though an entry appeared in his diary +one Sunday in about the seventh or eighth year of his age, +`married two wives this morning,' it only referred to +a vague imaginary appropriation of two girls whom he had just seen in church, +and whose charm probably lay in their being much bigger than he. +He was, however, capable of a self-conscious shyness +in the presence of even a little girl; and his sense of certain proprieties +was extraordinarily keen. He told a friend that on one occasion, +when the merest child, he had edged his way by the wall +from one point of his bedroom to another, because he was not fully clothed, +and his reflection in the glass could otherwise have been seen +through the partly open door.* + +-- +* Another anecdote, of a very different kind, belongs to an earlier period, + and to that category of pure naughtiness which could not fail + to be sometimes represented in the conduct of so gifted a child. + An old lady who visited his mother, and was characterized in the family + as `Aunt Betsy', had irritated him by pronouncing the word `lovers' + with the contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid + is sometimes apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen + why a certain `Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a baby + to imagine what a `lover' was; he supposed the name denoted + a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy resented Aunt Betsy's manner + as an affront; and he determined, after probably repeated provocation, + to show her something worse than a `lover', whatever this might be. + So one night he slipped out of bed, exchanged his nightgown + for what he considered the appropriate undress of a devil, + completed this by a paper tail, and the ugliest face he could make, + and rushed into the drawing-room, where the old lady and his mother + were drinking tea. He was snatched up and carried away + before he had had time to judge the effect of his apparition; + but he did not think, looking back upon the circumstances in later life, + that Aunt Betsy had deserved quite so ill of her fellow-creatures + as he then believed. +-- + +His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion. +The early Biblical training had had its effect, and he was, +to use his own words, `passionately religious' in those nursery years; +but during them and many succeeding ones, his mother filled his heart. +He loved her so much, he has been heard to say, that even as a grown man +he could not sit by her otherwise than with an arm round her waist. +It is difficult to measure the influence which this feeling may have exercised +on his later life; it led, even now, to a strange and touching little incident +which had in it the incipient poet no less than the loving child. +His attendance at Miss Ready's school only kept him from home +from Monday till Saturday of every week; but when called upon to confront +his first five days of banishment he felt sure that he would not survive them. +A leaden cistern belonging to the school had in, or outside it, +the raised image of a face. He chose the cistern for his place of burial, +and converted the face into his epitaph by passing his hand over and over it +to a continuous chant of: `In memory of unhappy Browning' -- +the ceremony being renewed in his spare moments, till the acute stage +of the feeling had passed away. + +The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted, was conspicuous +in his very earliest days. His urgent demand for `something to do' +would constantly include `something to be caught' for him: +`they were to catch him an eft;' `they were to catch him a frog.' +He would refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift +of a speckled frog from among the strawberries; and the maternal parasol, +hovering above the strawberry bed during the search for +this object of his desires, remained a standing picture in his remembrance. +But the love of the uncommon was already asserting itself; +and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection of rare creatures, +the first contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds, +picked up one winter's day on a wall and immediately consigned +to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled, `Animals found surviving +in the depths of a severe winter.' Nor did curiosity in this case +weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for birds and beasts +was the counterpart of his father's love of children, +only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears. +His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sister and him. +The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death by an ass +affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure +the sight of the book; and as he dared not destroy it, he buried it +between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, +where it stood for lost, at all events for the time being. +When first he heard the adventures of the parrot who insisted +on leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while +and then died of hunger and cold, he -- and his sister with him -- +cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending, +according to which the parrot was rescued just in time +and brought back to his cage to live peacefully in it ever after. + +As a boy, he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, +an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home +the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them +to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly +of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, +washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. +The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals +which reveals itself in his works is readily explained by these facts. + +Mr. Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in the neighbourhood; +and both there and under the preparatory training of that gentleman's sisters, +the young Robert was well and kindly cared for. The Misses Ready +especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfare of their pupils. +The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by the singing, +and fell naturally into the measure, of Watts's hymns; +and Mr. Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs +by illustrating with voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis +with which the brush would swoop down in the accentuated syllables +of the following lines: + + Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand + In gardens planted by Thy hand. + + . . . . . + + Fools never raise their thoughts so high, + Like `brutes' they live, like BRUTES they die. + +He even compelled his mother to laugh at it, though it was +sorely against her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing +of piously intended things.* He had become a bigger boy +since the episode of the cistern, and had probably in some degree +outgrown the intense piety of his earlier childhood. +This little incident seems to prove it. On the whole, however, +his religious instincts did not need strengthening, +though his sense of humour might get the better of them for a moment; +and of secular instruction he seems to have received as little +from the one set of teachers as from the other. I do not suppose +that the mental training at Mr. Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical +than that of most other schools of his own or, indeed, of a much later period; +but the brilliant abilities of Robert Browning inspired him +with a certain contempt for it, as also for the average schoolboy intelligence +to which it was apparently adapted. It must be for this reason that, +as he himself declared, he never gained a prize, although these rewards +were showered in such profusion that the only difficulty was to avoid them; +and if he did not make friends at school (for this also +has been somewhere observed),** it can only be explained in the same way. +He was at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him +as more backward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely +to have taken pains to conceal the impression. It is difficult, +at all events, to think of him as unsociable, and his talents +certainly had their amusing side. Miss Browning tells me that +he made his schoolfellows act plays, some of which he had written for them; +and he delighted his friends, not long ago, by mimicking +his own solemn appearance on some breaking-up or commemorative day, +when, according to programme, `Master Browning' ascended a platform +in the presence of assembled parents and friends, and, in best jacket, +white gloves, and carefully curled hair, with a circular bow to the company +and the then prescribed waving of alternate arms, delivered a high-flown +rhymed address of his own composition. + +-- +* In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always recognized + great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in Dr. Watts himself, + who had devoted to this comparatively humble work intellectual powers + competent to far higher things. +** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards Sir William, Channel + was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning went to him; but a friendly + acquaintance began, and was afterwards continued, between the two boys; + and a closer friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank, + was only interrupted by his death. Another school friend or acquaintance + recalled himself as such to the poet's memory some ten or twelve years ago. + A man who has reached the age at which his boyhood becomes + of interest to the world may even have survived many such relations. +-- + +And during the busy idleness of his schooldays, or, at all events, +in the holidays in which he rested from it, he was learning, +as perhaps only those do learn whose real education is derived from home. +His father's house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed with books; +and, she adds, `it was in this way that Robert became very early familiar +with subjects generally unknown to boys.' He read omnivorously, +though certainly not without guidance. One of the books +he best and earliest loved was `Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed +in a seventeenth century edition, and which contains one or two +very tentative specimens of his early handwriting. Its quaint, +powerful lines and still quainter illustrations combined the marvellous +with what he believed to be true; and he seemed specially identified +with its world of religious fancies by the fact that the soul in it +was always depicted as a child. On its more general grounds +his reading was at once largely literary and very historical; +and it was in this direction that the paternal influence +was most strongly revealed. `Quarles' Emblemes' was only one +of the large collection of old books which Mr. Browning possessed; +and the young Robert learnt to know each favourite author +in the dress as well as the language which carried with it +the life of his period. The first edition of `Robinson Crusoe'; +the first edition of Milton's works, bought for him by his father; +a treatise on astrology published twenty years after the introduction +of printing; the original pamphlet `Killing no Murder' (1559), +which Carlyle borrowed for his `Life of Cromwell'; an equally early copy +of Bernard Mandeville's `Bees'; very ancient Bibles -- +are some of the instances which occur to me. Among more modern publications, +`Walpole's Letters' were familiar to him in boyhood, +as well as the `Letters of Junius' and all the works of Voltaire. + +Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part +in the mental culture superintended by Robert Browning's father: +we can indeed imagine no case in which they would not have found their way +into the boy's life. Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him +in their due time, though his special delight in the Greek language +only developed itself later. But his loving, lifelong familiarity with +the Elizabethan school, and indeed with the whole range of English poetry, +seems to point to a more constant study of our national literature. +Byron was his chief master in those early poetic days. +He never ceased to honour him as the one poet who combined +a constructive imagination with the more technical qualities of his art; +and the result of this period of aesthetic training +was a volume of short poems produced, we are told, when he was only twelve, +in which the Byronic influence was predominant. + +The young author gave his work the title of `Incondita', +which conveyed a certain idea of deprecation. He was, nevertheless, +very anxious to see it in print; and his father and mother, +poetry-lovers of the old school, also found in it sufficient merit +to justify its publication. No publisher, however, could be found; +and we can easily believe that he soon afterwards destroyed +the little manuscript, in some mingled reaction of disappointment and disgust. +But his mother, meanwhile, had shown it to an acquaintance of hers, +Miss Flower, who herself admired its contents so much +as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her friend, +the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was transmitted +to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox; +and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at his urgent request, +that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse contained in a letter +from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much later that a friend, who had +earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitely heard of its destruction. +The fragment, which doubtless shared the same fate, was, I am told, +a direct imitation of Coleridge's `Fire, Famine, and Slaughter'. + +These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible +to believe them such when we remember that he composed verses +long before he could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact +has recently appeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning +have found their way into the market, and have been bought respectively +by Mr. Dykes Campbell and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them. +It was addressed to Mr. Thomas Powell: + +== +Dear Sir, -- I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. +They were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly +a hundred of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, +having a great aversion to the practice of many biographers +in recording every trifling incident that falls in their way. +He has not the slightest suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances +are in existence. I have several of the originals by me. +They are all extemporaneous productions, nor has any one a single alteration. +There was one amongst them `On Bonaparte' -- remarkably beautiful -- +and had I not seen it in his own handwriting I never would have believed it +to have been the production of a child. It is destroyed. +Pardon my troubling you with these specimens, and requesting you +never to mention it, as Robert would be very much hurt. + I remain, dear sir, + Your obedient servant, + R. Browning. +Bank: March 11, 1843. +== + +The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been +sold and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those +to which the writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them +as her father's own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, +together with the occasion on which they were written. +The substitution may, from the first, have been accidental. + +We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's genius +without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can have been +little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem to have lain +in the direction of too great splendour of language and too little +wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read `Incondita' +and been struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning +that he had feared these tendencies as his future snare. +But the imitative first note of a young poet's voice +may hold a rapture of inspiration which his most original later utterances +will never convey. It is the child Sordello, singing against the lark. + +Not even the poet's sister ever saw `Incondita'. It was the only one +of his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read, +or even help him to write out. She was then too young +to be taken into his confidence. Its writing, however, +had one important result. It procured for the boy-poet +a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary patron and friend +Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the first substantial record +of an acquaintance which made a considerable impression on his personal life. + +The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters, +both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place +in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie, +was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams, +a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known +`Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.* +They sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment, +their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were, +in their different ways, very attractive; both interesting, +not only from their talents, but from their attachment to each other, +and the delicacy which shortened their lives. They died of consumption, +the elder in 1846, at the age of forty-three; the younger a year later. +They became acquainted with Mrs. Browning through a common friend, +Miss Sturtevant; and the young Robert conceived a warm admiration +for Miss Flower's talents, and a boyish love for herself. +She was nine years his senior; her own affections became probably engaged, +and, as time advanced, his feeling seems to have subsided +into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We hear, indeed, +of his falling in love, as he was emerging from his teens, +with a handsome girl who was on a visit at his father's house. +But the fancy died out `for want of root.' The admiration, even tenderness, +for Miss Flower had so deep a `root' that he never in latest life +mentioned her name with indifference. In a letter to Mr. Dykes Campbell, +in 1881, he spoke of her as `a very remarkable person.' +If, in spite of his denials, any woman inspired `Pauline', +it can have been no other than she. He began writing to her +at twelve or thirteen, probably on the occasion of her expressed sympathy +with his first distinct effort at authorship; and what he afterwards called +`the few utterly insignificant scraps of letters and verse' +which formed his part of the correspondence were preserved by her +as long as she lived. But he recovered and destroyed them +after his return to England, with all the other reminiscences +of those early years. Some notes, however, are extant, dated respectively, +1841, 1842, and 1845, and will be given in their due place. + +-- +* She also wrote a dramatic poem in five acts, entitled `Vivia Perpetua', + referred to by Mrs. Jameson in her `Sacred and Legendary Art', + and by Leigh Hunt, when he spoke of her in `Blue-Stocking Revels', + as `Mrs. Adams, rare mistress of thought and of tears.' +-- + +Mr. Fox was a friend of Miss Flower's father (Benjamin Flower, +known as editor of the `Cambridge Intelligencer'), and, at his death, in 1829, +became co-executor to his will, and a kind of guardian to his daughters, +then both unmarried, and motherless from their infancy. +Eliza's principal work was a collection of hymns and anthems, +originally composed for Mr. Fox's chapel, where she had assumed +the entire management of the choral part of the service. +Her abilities were not confined to music; she possessed, I am told, +an instinctive taste and judgment in literary matters +which caused her opinion to be much valued by literary men. +But Mr. Browning's genuine appreciation of her musical genius +was probably the strongest permanent bond between them. +We shall hear of this in his own words. + + + + +Chapter 4 + +1826-1833 + + First Impressions of Keats and Shelley -- Prolonged Influence of Shelley -- + Details of Home Education -- Its Effects -- Youthful Restlessness -- + Counteracting Love of Home -- Early Friendships: Alfred Domett, + Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes -- Choice of Poetry as a Profession -- + Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning them -- + Interest in Art -- Love of good Theatrical Performances -- + Talent for Acting -- Final Preparation for Literary Life. + + + +At the period at which we have arrived, which is that of his leaving school +and completing his fourteenth year, another and a significant influence +was dawning on Robert Browning's life -- the influence of the poet Shelley. +Mr. Sharp writes,* and I could only state the facts in similar words, +`Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, +a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce."' +. . . `From vague remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two +casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley; +that he had written several volumes; that he was dead.' +. . . `He begged his mother to procure him Shelley's works, +a request not easily complied with, for the excellent reason +that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of the poet's name. +Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what she sought +was procurable at the Olliers', in Vere Street, London.' + +-- +* `Life of Browning', pp. 30, 31. [(Chapter 2) Now available online.] +-- + +Mrs. Browning went to Messrs. Ollier, and brought back +`most of Shelley's writings, all in their first edition, +with the exception of "The Cenci".' She brought also +three volumes of the still less known John Keats, on being assured +that one who liked Shelley's works would like these also. + +Keats and Shelley must always remain connected in this epoch +of Mr. Browning's poetic growth. They indeed came to him +as the two nightingales which, he told some friends, +sang together in the May-night which closed this eventful day: +one in the laburnum in his father's garden, the other in a copper beech +which stood on adjoining ground -- with the difference indeed, +that he must often have listened to the feathered singers before, +while the two new human voices sounded from what were to him, +as to so many later hearers, unknown heights and depths +of the imaginative world. Their utterance was, to such a spirit as his, +the last, as in a certain sense the first, word of what poetry can say; +and no one who has ever heard him read the `Ode to a Nightingale', +and repeat in the same subdued tones, as if continuing his own thoughts, +some line from `Epipsychidion', can doubt that they retained a lasting +and almost equal place in his poet's heart. But the two cannot be regarded +as equals in their relation to his life, and it would be a great mistake +to impute to either any important influence upon his genius. +We may catch some fleeting echoes of Keats's melody in `Pippa Passes'; +it is almost a commonplace that some measure of Shelleyan fancy +is recognizable in `Pauline'. But the poetic individuality of Robert Browning +was stronger than any circumstance through which it could be fed. +It would have found nourishment in desert air. With his first accepted work +he threw off what was foreign to his poetic nature, to be thenceforward +his own never-to-be-subdued and never-to-be-mistaken self. If Shelley became, +and long remained for him, the greatest poet of his age -- of almost any age +-- it was not because he held him greatest in the poetic art, +but because in his case, beyond all others, he believed its exercise +to have been prompted by the truest spiritual inspiration. + +It is difficult to trace the process by which this conviction formed itself +in the boy's mind; still more to account for the strong personal tenderness +which accompanied it. The facts can have been scarcely known which were +to present Shelley to his imagination as a maligned and persecuted man. +It is hard to judge how far such human qualities as we now read into his work, +could be apparent to one who only approached him through it. +But the extra-human note in Shelley's genius irresistibly suggested +to the Browning of fourteen, as it still did to the Browning of forty, +the presence of a lofty spirit, one dwelling in the communion +of higher things. There was often a deep sadness in his utterance; +the consecration of an early death was upon him. And so the worship +rooted itself and grew. It was to find its lyrical expression in `Pauline'; +its rational and, from the writer's point of view, philosophic justification +in the prose essay on Shelley, published eighteen years afterwards. + +It may appear inconsistent with the nature of this influence +that it began by appealing to him in a subversive form. +The Shelley whom Browning first loved was the Shelley of `Queen Mab', +the Shelley who would have remodelled the whole system of religious belief, +as of human duty and rights; and the earliest result of the new development +was that he became a professing atheist, and, for two years, +a practising vegetarian. He returned to his natural diet +when he found his eyesight becoming weak. The atheism cured itself; +we do not exactly know when or how. What we do know is, +that it was with him a passing state of moral or imaginative rebellion, +and not one of rational doubt. His mind was not so constituted +that such doubt could fasten itself upon it; nor did he ever in after-life +speak of this period of negation except as an access of boyish folly, +with which his maturer self could have no concern. +The return to religious belief did not shake his faith in his new prophet. +It only made him willing to admit that he had misread him. + +This Shelley period of Robert Browning's life -- that which intervened +between `Incondita' and `Pauline' -- remained, nevertheless, +one of rebellion and unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributed +besides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided +that he was to complete, or at all events continue, his education at home; +and, knowing the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt +that the best reasons, of kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding. +It was none the less, probably, a mistake, for the time being. +The conditions of home life were the more favourable +for the young poet's imaginative growth; but there can rarely +have been a boy whose moral and mental health had more to gain +by the combined discipline and freedom of a public school. +His home training was made to include everything which in those days went +to the production of an accomplished gentleman, and a great deal therefore +that was physically good. He learned music, singing, dancing, riding, +boxing, and fencing, and excelled in the more active of these pursuits. +The study of music was also serious, and carried on under two masters. +Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable work on counterpoint, +was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil of Moscheles, +in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himself sang; +among them Donne's `Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's `I will not have +the mad Clytie'; Peacock's `The mountain sheep are sweeter'; and his settings, +all of which he subsequently destroyed, were, I am told, very spirited. +His education seems otherwise to have been purely literary. For two years, +from the age of fourteen to that of sixteen, he studied with a French tutor, +who, whether this was intended or not, imparted to him very little +but a good knowledge of the French language and literature. +In his eighteenth year he attended, for a term or two, +a Greek class at the London University. His classical and other reading +was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of mathematics, +or logic -- of any, in short, of those subjects which train, even coerce, +the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for a nature in which +the creative imagination was predominant over all the other mental faculties, +great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from +this omission: since the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase, +which occur in his earlier and again in his latest works, +must have been partly due to his never learning to follow the processes +of more normally constituted minds. It would be a great error to suppose +that they ever arose from the absence of a meaning clearly felt, +if not always clearly thought out, by himself. He was storing his memory +and enriching his mind; but precisely in so doing he was nourishing +the consciousness of a very vivid and urgent personality; +and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of a home-bred youth, +it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found in verse +we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then have written. +It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, still more, +the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards poetic production. +It would be a relief to him to sketch out and elaborate the plan of his +future work -- his great mental portrait gallery of typical men and women; +and he was doing so during at least the later years +which preceded the birth of `Pauline'. But even this must have been +the result of some protracted travail with himself; because it was only +the inward sense of very varied possibilities of existence +which could have impelled him towards this kind of creation. +No character he ever produced was merely a figment of the brain. + +It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he should +have been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other. +The always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness. +He behaved as a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes +that he is not appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms +which his cleverness assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds. +He set the judgments of those about him at defiance, +and gratuitously proclaimed himself everything that he was, +and some things that he was not. All this subdued itself as time advanced, +and the coming man in him could throw off the wayward child. +It was all so natural that it might well be forgotten. But it distressed +his mother, the one being in the world whom he entirely loved; +and deserves remembering in the tender sorrow with which he himself +remembered it. He was always ready to say that he had been worth little +in his young days; indeed, his self-depreciation covered the greater part +of his life. This was, perhaps, one reason of the difficulty of inducing him +to dwell upon his past. `I am better now,' he has said more than once, +when its reminiscences have been invoked. + +One tender little bond maintained itself between his mother and himself +so long as he lived under the paternal roof; it was his rule +never to go to bed without giving her a good-night kiss. +If he was out so late that he had to admit himself with a latch-key, +he nevertheless went to her in her room. Nor did he submit to this +as a necessary restraint; for, except on the occasions of his going abroad, +it is scarcely on record that he ever willingly spent a night away from home. +It may not stand for much, or it may stand to the credit of his restlessness, +that, when he had been placed with some gentleman in Gower Street, +for the convenience of attending the University lectures, +or for the sake of preparing for them, he broke through the arrangement +at the end of a week; but even an agreeable visit had no power to detain him +beyond a few days. + +This home-loving quality was in curious contrast to the natural bohemianism +of youthful genius, and the inclination to wildness which asserted itself +in his boyish days. It became the more striking as he entered upon the age +at which no reasonable amount of freedom can have been denied to him. +Something, perhaps, must be allowed for the pecuniary dependence +which forbade his forming any expensive habits of amusement; +but he also claims the credit of having been unable to accept +any low-life pleasures in place of them. I do not know +how the idea can have arisen that he willingly sought his experience +in the society of `gipsies and tramps'. I remember nothing in his works +which even suggests such association; and it is certain +that a few hours spent at a fair would at all times have exhausted +his capability of enduring it. In the most audacious imaginings +of his later life, in the most undisciplined acts of his early youth, +were always present curious delicacies and reserves. +There was always latent in him the real goodness of heart +which would not allow him to trifle consciously with other lives. +Work must also have been his safeguard when the habit of it had been acquired, +and when imagination, once his master, had learned to serve him. + +One tangible cause of his youthful restlessness has been implied +in the foregoing remarks, but deserves stating in his sister's words: +`The fact was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. +They were absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; +he chafed under them.' He was not, however, quite without congenial society +even before the turning-point in his outward existence which was reached +in the publication of `Pauline'; and one long friendly acquaintance, +together with one lasting friendship, had their roots in these +early Camberwell days. The families of Joseph Arnould and Alfred Domett both +lived at Camberwell. These two young men were bred to the legal profession, +and the former, afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould, became a judge in Bombay. +But the father of Alfred Domett had been one of Nelson's captains, +and the roving sailor spirit was apparent in his son; +for he had scarcely been called to the Bar when he started for New Zealand +on the instance of a cousin who had preceded him, but who was drowned +in the course of a day's surveying before he could arrive. +He became a member of the New Zealand Parliament, and ultimately, +for a short time, of its Cabinet; only returning to England +after an absence of thirty years. This Mr. Domett seems to have been +a very modest man, besides a devoted friend of Robert Browning's, +and on occasion a warm defender of his works. When he read +the apostrophe to `Alfred, dear friend,' in the `Guardian Angel', +he had reached the last line before it occurred to him +that the person invoked could be he. I do not think that this poem, +and that directly addressed to him under the pseudonym of `Waring', +were the only ones inspired by the affectionate remembrance +which he had left in their author's mind. + +Among his boy companions were also the three Silverthornes, +his neighbours at Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side. +They appear to have been wild youths, and had certainly no part +in his intellectual or literary life; but the group is interesting +to his biographer. The three brothers were all gifted musicians; +having also, probably, received this endowment from their mother's father. +Mr. Browning conceived a great affection for the eldest, +and on the whole most talented of the cousins; and when he had died +-- young, as they all did -- he wrote `May and Death' in remembrance of him. +The name of `Charles' stands there for the old, familiar `Jim', +so often uttered by him in half-pitying, and all-affectionate allusion, +in his later years. Mrs. Silverthorne was the aunt who paid +for the printing of `Pauline'. + +It was at about the time of his short attendance at University College +that the choice of poetry as his future profession was formally made. +It was a foregone conclusion in the young Robert's mind; and little less +in that of his father, who took too sympathetic an interest in his son's life +not to have seen in what direction his desires were tending. +He must, it is true, at some time or other, have played with the thought +of becoming an artist; but the thought can never have represented a wish. +If he had entertained such a one, it would have met not only +with no opposition on his father's part, but with a very ready assent, +nor does the question ever seem to have been seriously mooted +in the family councils. It would be strange, perhaps, if it had. +Mr. Browning became very early familiar with the names of the great painters, +and also learned something about their work; for the Dulwich Gallery +was within a pleasant walk of his home, and his father constantly +took him there. He retained through life a deep interest in art and artists, +and became a very familiar figure in one or two London studios. +Some drawings made by him from the nude, in Italy, and for which +he had prepared himself by assiduous copying of casts +and study of human anatomy, had, I believe, great merit. +But painting was one of the subjects in which he never received instruction, +though he modelled, under the direction of his friend Mr. Story; +and a letter of his own will presently show that, in his youth at least, +he never credited himself with exceptional artistic power. +That he might have become an artist, and perhaps a great one, +is difficult to doubt, in the face of his brilliant general ability +and special gifts. The power to do a thing is, however, +distinct from the impulse to do it, and proved so in the present case. + +More importance may be given to an idea of his father's that he should +qualify himself for the Bar. It would naturally coincide with the widening +of the social horizon which his University College classes supplied; +it was possibly suggested by the fact that the closest friends +he had already made, and others whom he was perhaps now making, +were barristers. But this also remained an idea. He might have been placed +in the Bank of England, where the virtual offer of an appointment +had been made to him through his father; but the elder Browning +spontaneously rejected this, as unworthy of his son's powers. +He had never, he said, liked bank work himself, and could not, therefore, +impose it on him. + +We have still to notice another, and a more mistaken view +of the possibilities of Mr. Browning's life. It has been recently stated, +doubtless on the authority of some words of his own, +that the Church was a profession to which he once felt himself drawn. +But an admission of this kind could only refer to that period of his childhood +when natural impulse, combined with his mother's teaching and guidance, +frequently caused his fancy and his feelings to assume a religious form. +From the time when he was a free agent he ceased to be +even a regular churchgoer, though religion became more, rather than less, +an integral part of his inner life; and his alleged fondness +for a variety of preachers meant really that he only listened +to those who, from personal association or conspicuous merit, +were interesting to him. I have mentioned Canon Melvill as one of these; +the Rev. Thomas Jones was, as will be seen, another. +In Venice he constantly, with his sister, joined the congregation +of an Italian minister of the little Vaudois church there.* + +-- +* Mr. Browning's memory recalled a first and last effort at preaching, + inspired by one of his very earliest visits to a place of worship. + He extemporized a surplice or gown, climbed into an arm-chair + by way of pulpit, and held forth so vehemently that + his scarcely more than baby sister was frightened and began to cry; + whereupon he turned to an imaginary presence, and said, + with all the sternness which the occasion required, + `Pew-opener, remove that child.' +-- + +It would be far less surprising if we were told, on sufficient authority, +that he had been disturbed by hankerings for the stage. +He was a passionate admirer of good acting, and would walk from London +to Richmond and back again to see Edmund Kean when he was performing there. +We know how Macready impressed him, though the finer genius of Kean +became very apparent to his retrospective judgment of the two; +and it was impossible to see or hear him, as even an old man, +in some momentary personation of one of Shakespeare's characters, +above all of Richard III., and not feel that a great actor +had been lost in him. + +So few professions were thought open to gentlemen in Robert Browning's +eighteenth year, that his father's acquiescence in that which he had chosen +might seem a matter scarcely less of necessity than of kindness. +But we must seek the kindness not only in this first, almost inevitable, +assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent +unfailing readiness to support him in his literary career. +`Paracelsus', `Sordello', and the whole of `Bells and Pomegranates' +were published at his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, +brought no return to him. This was vividly present to Mr. Browning's mind +in what Mrs. Kemble so justly defines as those `remembering days' +which are the natural prelude to the forgetting ones. +He declared, in the course of these, to a friend, that for it alone +he owed more to his father than to anyone else in the world. +Words to this effect, spoken in conversation with his sister, +have since, as it was right they should, found their way into print. +The more justly will the world interpret any incidental admission +he may ever have made, of intellectual disagreement +between that father and himself. + +When the die was cast, and young Browning was definitely to adopt literature +as his profession, he qualified himself for it by reading and digesting +the whole of Johnson's Dictionary. We cannot be surprised +to hear this of one who displayed so great a mastery of words, +and so deep a knowledge of the capacities of the English language. + + + + +Chapter 5 + +1833-1835 + + `Pauline' -- Letters to Mr. Fox -- Publication of the Poem; + chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics -- + Mr. Fox's Review in the `Monthly Repository'; other Notices -- + Russian Journey -- Desired diplomatic Appointment -- + Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of Appearance -- `The Trifler' -- + M. de Ripert-Monclar -- `Paracelsus' -- Letters to Mr. Fox concerning it; + its Publication -- Incidental Origin of `Paracelsus'; + its inspiring Motive; its Relation to `Pauline' -- + Mr. Fox's Review of it in the `Monthly Repository' -- + Article in the `Examiner' by John Forster. + + + +Before Mr. Browning had half completed his twenty-first year +he had written `Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession'. +His sister was in the secret, but this time his parents were not. +This is why his aunt, hearing that `Robert' had `written a poem,' +volunteered the sum requisite for its publication. Even this first +instalment of success did not inspire much hope in the family mind, +and Miss Browning made pencil copies of her favourite passages for the event, +which seemed only too possible, of her never seeing the whole poem again. +It was, however, accepted by Saunders and Otley, and appeared anonymously +in 1833. Meanwhile the young author had bethought himself +of his early sympathizer, Mr. Fox, and he wrote to him as follows +(the letter is undated): + +== +Dear Sir, -- Perhaps by the aid of the subjoined initials +and a little reflection, you may recollect an oddish sort of boy, +who had the honour of being introduced to you at Hackney some years back -- +at that time a sayer of verse and a doer of it, and whose doings +you had a little previously commended after a fashion -- +(whether in earnest or not God knows): that individual it is +who takes the liberty of addressing one whose slight commendation then, +was more thought of than all the gun drum and trumpet of praise would be now, +and to submit to you a free and easy sort of thing which he wrote +some months ago `on one leg' and which comes out this week -- +having either heard or dreamed that you contribute to the `Westminster'. + +Should it be found too insignificant for cutting up, I shall no less remain, + Dear sir, + Your most obedient servant, + R. B. + +I have forgotten the main thing -- which is to beg you not to spoil +a loophole I have kept for backing out of the thing if necessary, +`sympathy of dear friends,' &c. &c., none of whom know anything about it. + +Monday Morning; Rev. -- Fox. +== + +The answer was clearly encouraging, and Mr. Browning wrote again: + +== +Dear Sir, -- In consequence of your kind permission I send, or will send, +a dozen copies of `Pauline' and (to mitigate the infliction) Shelley's Poem -- +on account of what you mentioned this morning. It will perhaps be as well +that you let me know their safe arrival by a line to R. B. junior, +Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell. You must not think me +too encroaching, if I make the getting back `Rosalind and Helen' +an excuse for calling on you some evening -- the said `R. and H.' has, +I observe, been well thumbed and sedulously marked by an acquaintance of mine, +but I have not time to rub out his labour of love. + I am, dear sir, + Yours very really, + R. Browning. +Camberwell: 2 o'clock. +== + +At the left-hand corner of the first page of this note is written: +`The parcel -- a "Pauline" parcel -- is come. I send one as a witness.' + +On the inner page is written: + +`Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R. -- pronounced "heavy" -- + + `A HEAVY sermon! -- sure the error's great, + For not a word Tom uttered HAD ITS WEIGHT.' + +A third letter, also undated, but post-marked March 29, 1833, +refers probably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. +A fourth conveys Mr. Browning's thanks for the notice itself: + +== +My dear Sir, -- I have just received your letter, which I am desirous +of acknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me; -- +I can only offer you my simple thanks -- but they are of the sort +that one can give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, +I think you are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel -- +and it will have been worth while to have made a fool of myself, +only to have obtained a `case' which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville +at a dead lock. + +As for the book -- I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve your goodness. + +In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir, + Your most obliged and obedient servant + R. B. +S. & O.'s, Conduit St., Thursday m-g. +== + +== +I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I had intended +-- but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect at all hazards. + +I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, +and not altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, +your most generous `coming forward'. Hazlitt wrote his essays, +as he somewhere tells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country +who had `always prophesied he would be something'! -- +I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise, +be assured. + I am, dear sir, + Yours most truly and obliged, + Robert Browning. +March 31, 1833. +== + +Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the `Monthly Repository', +which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her graceful article +on Robert Browning, in the `Argosy' for February 1890, +he was endeavouring to raise from its original denominational character +into a first-class literary and political journal. The articles comprised +in the volume for 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, +at once more popular and more solid than those prescribed +by the present fashion of monthly magazines. He reviewed `Pauline' favourably +in its April number -- that is, as soon as it had appeared; +and the young poet thus received from him an introduction +to what should have been, though it probably was not, +a large circle of intelligent readers. + +The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, +in a fantastic note appended to a copy of it, as `the only remaining crab +of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.' This name is ill bestowed +upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning's genius, +contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, +so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, +its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these +that Mr. Browning was probably thinking when he wrote +his more serious apologetic preface to its reprint in 1868. +But these faults were partly due to his conception of the character +which he had tried to depict; and partly to the inherent difficulty +of depicting one so complex, in a succession of mental and moral states, +irrespectively of the conditions of time, place, and circumstance +which were involved in them. Only a very powerful imagination could have +inspired such an attempt. A still more conspicuous effort of creative genius +reveals itself at its close. The moment chosen for the `Confession' +has been that of a supreme moral or physical crisis. +The exhaustion attendant on this is directly expressed +by the person who makes it, and may also be recognized in the vivid, +yet confusing, intensity of the reminiscences of which it consists. +But we are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis +is that of approaching death or incipient convalescence, +or which character it bears in the sufferer's mind; and the language used +in the closing pages is such as to suggest, without the slightest break +in poetic continuity, alternately the one conclusion and the other. +This was intended by Browning to assist his anonymity; +and when the writer in `Tait's Magazine' spoke of the poem as a piece +of pure bewilderment, he expressed the natural judgment of the Philistine, +while proving himself such. If the notice by J. S. Mill, which this +criticism excluded, was indeed -- as Mr. Browning always believed -- +much more sympathetic, I can only record my astonishment; +for there never was a large and cultivated intelligence +one can imagine less in harmony than his with the poetic excesses, +or even the poetic qualities, of `Pauline'. But this is a digression. + +Mr. Fox, though an accomplished critic, made very light +of the artistic blemishes of the work. His admiration for it +was as generous as it was genuine; and, having recognized in it +the hand of a rising poet, it was more congenial to him +to hail that poet's advent than to register his shortcomings. + +== +`The poem,' he says, `though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, +has truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us +with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us +as a test of genius.' +== + +But it had also, in his mind, a distinguishing characteristic, +which raised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism. +The article continues: + +== +`We have never read anything more purely confessional. The whole composition +is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of thought; +the agencies are powers and passions; the events are transitions +from one state of spiritual existence to another.' +== + +And we learn from the context that he accepted this +confessional and introspective quality as an expression +of the highest emotional life -- of the essence, therefore, of religion. +On this point the sincerest admirers of the poem may find themselves +at issue with Mr. Fox. Its sentiment is warmly religious; it is always, +in a certain sense, spiritual; but its intellectual activities are exercised +on entirely temporal ground, and this fact would generally be admitted +as the negation of spirituality in the religious sense of the word. +No difference, however, of opinion as to his judgment of `Pauline' +can lessen our appreciation of Mr. Fox's encouraging kindness to its author. +No one who loved Mr. Browning in himself, or in his work, can read +the last lines of this review without a throb of affectionate gratitude for +the sympathy so ungrudgingly, and -- as he wrote during his latest years -- +so opportunely given: + +== +`In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves +about such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for that afterwards, +when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath +had many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown, +but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted `Eureka!'' +== + +Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known to fame. +One only discovered him in his obscurity. + +Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster +among the first spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; +and his admiration was, in its own way, the more valuable +for the circumstances which precluded in it all possible, +even unconscious, bias of personal interest or sympathy. +But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our history. + +I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning's +literary career, because the confidence which it gave him +determined its immediate future, if not its ultimate course -- because, also, +the poem itself is more important to the understanding of his mind +than perhaps any other of his isolated works. It was the earliest +of his dramatic creations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct +with himself; and we may regard the `Confession' as to a great extent his own, +without for an instant ignoring the imaginative element +which necessarily and certainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, +his utterance is so emphatic that we should feel it to be direct, +even if we did not know it to be true. The passage beginning, +`I am made up of an intensest life,' conveys something more +than the writer's actual psychological state. The feverish desire of life +became gradually modified into a more or less active +intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense of an individual, +self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him, unconditioned existence, +survived all the teachings of experience, and often indeed +unconsciously imposed itself upon them. + +I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment +of distinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation +to the `Sun-treader'. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, +justly declares that `the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret +mingling with its exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful.' +The `exultation' is in the triumph of Shelley's rising fame; +the regret, for the lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness +at an obscure shrine. The double mood would have been characteristic +of any period of Mr. Browning's life. + +The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural imagery +of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy +instead of the direct poetic vision of the author's later work. + +`Pauline' received another and graceful tribute two months later +than the review. In an article of the `Monthly Repository', +and in the course of a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, +the following passage occurs: + +== +`Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . +They are natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted +would grow as surely as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. +`Probatum est.' Last autumn L---- dropped a poem of Shelley's +down there in the wood,* amongst the thick, damp, rotting leaves, +and this spring some one found a delicate exotic-looking plant, +growing wild on the very spot, with `Pauline' hanging from its slender stalk. +Unripe fruit it may be, but of pleasant flavour and promise, +and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, will follow.' + +-- +* Mr. Browning's copy of `Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent + to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic. +-- +== + +This and a bald though well-meant notice in the `Athenaeum' +exhaust its literary history for this period.* + +-- +* Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words, + Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract + from the `Literary Gazette' of March 23, 1833: + + ``Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession', pp. 71. London, 1833. + Saunders and Otley. + + `Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual, + and not a little unintelligible, -- this is a dreamy volume, + without an object, and unfit for publication.' +-- + +The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason +why it should be. But `Pauline' was, from the first, +little known or discussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet's friends; +and when, twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it +in the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise +that it had been written by the author of `Paracelsus'. + +The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning's +visit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. +The Russian consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, +and being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that +he should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. +The letters written to his sister during this, as during every other absence, +were full of graphic description, and would have been a mine of interest for +the student of his imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all destroyed, +and we have only scattered reminiscences of what they had to tell; but we know +how strangely he was impressed by some of the circumstances of the journey: +above all, by the endless monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, +through which he and his companion rushed for days and nights +at the speed of six post-horses, without seeming to move from one spot. +He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough, +before his return, to witness the breaking-up of the ice on the Neva, +and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony of drinking +the first glass of water from it. He was absent about three months. + +The one active career which would have recommended itself to him +in his earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired +for his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post +of activity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. +Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment +on a mission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wording +of the answer which his application received made him think for a moment +that it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned, +through an interview with the `chief', that the place was otherwise filled. + +In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the `Monthly Repository', +extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The earliest of these +was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. Browning's works, +and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse's article +in the `Century Magazine', December 1881; now part of his `Personalia'. +The second, beginning `A king lived long ago', was to be published, +with alterations and additions, as one of `Pippa's' songs. +`Porphyria's Lover' and `Johannes Agricola in Meditation' +were reprinted together in `Bells and Pomegranates' +under the heading of `Madhouse Cells'. The fifth consisted of +the Lines beginning `Still ailing, Wind? wilt be appeased or no?' +afterwards introduced into the sixth section of `James Lee's Wife'. +The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the poet's +future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most essential +dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems. + +This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, +of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends; +foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected +with Alfred Domett. The magazine was called the `Trifler', +and published in monthly numbers of about ten pages each. +It collapsed from lack of pocket-money on the part of the editors; +but Mr. Browning had written for it one letter, February 1833, +signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled `Some strictures on +a late article in the `Trifler'.' This boyish production sparkles with fun, +while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses of some obsolete modes of speech. +The article which it attacks was `A Dissertation on Debt and Debtors', +where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the orthodox way: +and he expends all his paradox in showing that indebtedness +is a necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry in confusing it +with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair +to call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; +but there is something so comical in a defence of debt, +however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his life +a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have preferred +ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be forgiven +for quoting some passages from it. + +== +For to be man is to be a debtor: -- hinting but slightly +at the grand and primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, +as matter too hard for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, +What hath a cow to do with nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, +remind thee that all moralists have concurred in considering +this our mortal sojourn as indeed an uninterrupted state of debt, +and the world our dwelling-place as represented by nothing so aptly +as by an inn, wherein those who lodge most commodiously +have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,* +and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to discharge -- +or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it -- + + He's most in DEBT who lingers out the day, + Who dies betimes has less and less to pay. + +So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that + + Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c. + +as thou pratest, 'tis plain that they have willed on the very outset +to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man, -- +no barren and inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, +ever influencing and productive rule of life, -- that he is born a debtor, +lives a debtor -- aye, friend, and when thou diest, will not +some judicious bystander, -- no recreant as thou to the bonds of nature, +but a good borrower and true -- remark, as did his grandsire before him +on like occasions, that thou hast `paid the DEBT of nature'? +Ha! I have thee `beyond the rules', as one (a bailiff) may say! + +-- +* Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my attention to the fact + that the sentiment which it parodies is identical with that expressed + in these words of `Prospice', + + . . . in a minute pay glad life's arrears + Of pain, darkness, and cold. +-- +== + +Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work +of writing `Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, +and which occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know +to what extent Mr. Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; +but the following letters show that the friend of `Pauline' +gave ready and efficient help in the strangely difficult task +of securing a publisher for the new poem. + +The first is dated April 2, 1835. + +== +Dear Sir, -- I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter: -- +Sardanapalus `could not go on multiplying kingdoms' -- nor I protestations -- +but I thank you very much. + +You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. +I merely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name and fame +among author-folk, besides he has himself written -- as the Americans say -- +`more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at.' So I hope we shall come to terms. + +I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind interest, +and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have as yet seen; +indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, +for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise +to prove nobody after all -- `nous verrons'. + I am, dear sir, + Yours most truly and obliged + Robt. Browning. +== + +On April 16 he wrote again as follows: + +== +Dear Sir, + +Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time +in presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter perused +than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat -- the Moxonian accent +grew dolorous thereupon: -- `Artevelde' has not paid expenses +by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is `popular at Cambridge', +and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, some 300 only +have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again, +&c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c. + +I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, +do really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms -- +I shall know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine. + +You will `sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, +you must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have +of your criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, +surely I am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance +bored you sufficiently: but not a particle of your article +has been rejected or neglected by your observant humble servant, +and very proud shall I be if my new work bear in it +the marks of the influence under which it was undertaken -- +and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace +who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. +I purposely keep back the subject until you see my conception +of its capabilities -- otherwise you would be planning a vase +fit to give the go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus +would cut but a sorry figure beside -- hardly up to the ansa. + +But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive -- +and likely I hope to do good; and though I am rather scared +at the thought of a FRESH EYE going over its 4,000 lines -- +discovering blemishes of all sorts which my one wit cannot avail to detect, +fools treated as sages, obscure passages, slipshod verses, +and much that worse is, -- yet on the whole I am not much afraid of the issue, +and I would give something to be allowed to read it some morning to you -- +for every rap o' the knuckles I should get a clap o' the back, I know. + +I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I conceive, +but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two -- so I decide +on trying the question with this: -- I really shall NEED your notice, +on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo; +there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and scope +are awfully radical -- I am `off' for ever with the other side, +but must by all means be `on' with yours -- a position once gained, +worthier works shall follow -- therefore a certain writer* +who meditated a notice (it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on `Pauline' +in the `Examiner', must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, +but in no case an idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage +(having previously only dabbled in private theatricals) +and bawl `Hats off!' `Down in front!' &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium; +and he may depend that tho' my `Now is the winter of our discontent' +be rather awkward, yet there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff -- +that I shall warm as I get on, and finally wish `Richmond at the bottom +of the seas,' &c. in the best style imaginable. + +-- +* Mr. John Stuart Mill. +-- + +Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and +== + +(The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.) + +Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we understand, +on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the author +than on that of its intrinsic worth. + +The title-page of `Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmest friendships +of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young French Royalist, +one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri +on her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, +spending his summers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, +really -- as he confessed to the Browning family -- in the character +of private agent of communication between the royal exiles +and their friends in France. He was four years older than the poet, +and of intellectual tastes which created an immediate bond of union +between them. In the course of one of their conversations, +he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible subject for a poem; +but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, because it gave no room +for the introduction of love: about which, he added, +every young man of their age thought he had something quite new to say. +Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would write a poem +on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was dedicated, +in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its inspiration +had been due. + +The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends +did not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, +Mr. Browning heard a voice behind him crying, `Robert!' +He turned, and there was `Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married; +the Count -- then, I believe, Marquis -- to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. +Mrs. Browning, to whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.* + +-- +* A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning + became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, + and in 1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, + to both of which learned bodies his friend belonged. +-- + +Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing +produced a character -- at all events a history -- which, +according to recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality +than any conception which had until then been formed of it. +He had carefully collected all the known facts of the great discoverer's life, +and interpreted them with a sympathy which was no less +an intuition of their truth than a reflection of his own genius upon them. +We are enabled in some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled +`Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine', written by Dr. Edward Berdoe +for the Browning Society, and read at its October meeting in 1888; +and in the difficulty which exists for most of us of verifying +the historical data of Mr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, +as well as an interesting comment upon it. + +Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus +without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, +as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; +and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings +of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus, +and who appears as such in the poem. The passage is a definition +of divine magic, which is apparently another term for alchemy; +and lays down the great doctrine of all mediaeval occultism, +as of all modern theosophy -- of a soul-power equally operative +in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in the consciousness of man. + +The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparently +conflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience, +of the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit, +among the things of Nature, of an ultimate of knowledge, +not contained, even in fragments, in her isolated truths; +the sense of failure which haunts his most valuable attainments; +his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic, when the divine has failed; +the ascetic exaltation in which he begins his career; the sudden awakening +to the spiritual sterility which has been consequent on it; +all these find their place, if not always their counterpart, in the real life. + +The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards +himself and the world, are not, however, quite consonant +with the alleged facts. They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer +of the world of abstract thought than to a mystical scientist pursuing +the secret of existence. He preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes, +a loftiness of tone and a unity of intention, difficult to connect, +even in fancy, with the real man, in whom the inherited superstitions +and the prognostics of true science must often have clashed with each other. +Dr. Berdoe's picture of the `Reformer' drawn more directly from history, +conveys this double impression. Mr. Browning has rendered him more simple +by, as it were, recasting him in the atmosphere of a more modern time, +and of his own intellectual life. This poem still, therefore, belongs +to the same group as `Pauline', though, as an effort of dramatic creation, +superior to it. + +We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise +in the deathbed revelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story. +It supplies a fitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus, +than to those of the historical, whether or not its utterance +was within the compass of historical probability, as Dr. Berdoe believes. +In any case it was the direct product of Mr. Browning's mind, +and expressed what was to be his permanent conviction. +It might then have been an echo of German pantheistic philosophies. +From the point of view of science -- of modern science at least -- +it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one for whom +evolution could never mean less or more than a divine creation +operating on this progressive plan. + +The more striking, perhaps, for its personal quality +are the evidences of imaginative sympathy, even direct human insight, +in which the poem abounds. Festus is, indeed, an essentially human creature: +the man -- it might have been the woman -- of unambitious intellect +and large intelligence of the heart, in whom so many among us +have found comfort and help. We often feel, in reading `Pauline', +that the poet in it was older than the man. The impression is +more strongly and more definitely conveyed by this second work, +which has none of the intellectual crudeness of `Pauline', +though it still belongs to an early phase of the author's intellectual life. +Not only its mental, but its moral maturity, seems so much in advance +of his uncompleted twenty-third year. + +To the first edition of `Paracelsus' was affixed a preface, +now long discarded, but which acquires fresh interest in a retrospect +of the author's completed work; for it lays down the constant principle +of dramatic creation by which that work was to be inspired. +It also anticipates probable criticism of the artistic form which on this, +and so many subsequent occasions, he selected for it. + +== +`I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset -- +mistaking my performance for one of a class with which it has +nothing in common -- judge it by principles on which it was never moulded, +and subject it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. +I therefore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, +probably more novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted +by writers whose aim it is to set forth any phenomenon +of the mind or the passions, by the operation of persons and events; +and that, instead of having recourse to an external machinery of incidents +to create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured +to display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, +and have suffered the agency by which it is influenced and determined, +to be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, +if not altogether excluded: and this for a reason. I have endeavoured +to write a poem, not a drama: the canons of the drama are well known, +and I cannot but think that, inasmuch as they have immediate regard +to stage representation, the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such +only so long as the purpose for which they were at first instituted +is kept in view. I do not very well understand what is called +a Dramatic Poem, wherein all those restrictions only submitted to +on account of compensating good in the original scheme +are scrupulously retained, as though for some special fitness in themselves -- +and all new facilities placed at an author's disposal +by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously rejected. . . .' +== + +Mr. Fox reviewed this also in the `Monthly Repository'. +The article might be obtained through the kindness of Mrs. Bridell-Fox; +but it will be sufficient for my purpose to refer to its closing paragraph, +as given by her in the `Argosy' of February 1890. It was a final expression +of what the writer regarded as the fitting intellectual attitude +towards a rising poet, whose aims and methods lay so far beyond +the range of the conventional rules of poetry. The great event +in the history of `Paracelsus' was John Forster's article on it +in the `Examiner'. Mr. Forster had recently come to town. +He could barely have heard Mr. Browning's name, and, +as he afterwards told him, was perplexed in reading the poem by the question +of whether its author was an old or a young man; but he knew that a writer +in the `Athenaeum' had called it rubbish, and he had taken it up +as a probable subject for a piece of slashing criticism. +What he did write can scarcely be defined as praise. It was the simple, +ungrudging admission of the unequivocal power, as well as brilliant promise, +which he recognized in the work. This mutual experience +was the introduction to a long and, certainly on Mr. Browning's part, +a sincere friendship. + + + + +Chapter 6 + +1835-1838 + + Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars -- Renewed Intercourse + with the second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather -- + Reuben Browning -- William Shergold Browning -- Visitors at Hatcham -- + Thomas Carlyle -- Social Life -- New Friends and Acquaintance -- + Introduction to Macready -- New Year's Eve at Elm Place -- + Introduction to John Forster -- Miss Fanny Haworth -- Miss Martineau -- + Serjeant Talfourd -- The `Ion' Supper -- `Strafford' -- + Relations with Macready -- Performance of `Strafford' -- + Letters concerning it from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower -- + Personal Glimpses of Robert Browning -- Rival Forms + of Dramatic Inspiration -- Relation of `Strafford' to `Sordello' -- + Mr. Robertson and the `Westminster Review'. + + + +It was soon after this time, though the exact date cannot be recalled, +that the Browning family moved from Camberwell to Hatcham. +Some such change had long been in contemplation, for their house +was now too small; and the finding one more suitable, in the latter place, +had decided the question. The new home possessed great attractions. +The long, low rooms of its upper storey supplied abundant accommodation +for the elder Mr. Browning's six thousand books. Mrs. Browning +was suffering greatly from her chronic ailment, neuralgia; +and the large garden, opening on to the Surrey hills, promised her +all the benefits of country air. There were a coach-house and stable, +which, by a curious, probably old-fashioned, arrangement, +formed part of the house, and were accessible from it. +Here the `good horse', York, was eventually put up; and near this, +in the garden, the poet soon had another though humbler friend +in the person of a toad, which became so much attached to him +that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, +where it burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself +by a pinch of gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature +would crawl forth, allow its head to be gently tickled, +and reward the act with that loving glance of the soft full eyes +which Mr. Browning has recalled in one of the poems of `Asolando'. + +This change of residence brought the grandfather's second family, +for the first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. +Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms +with his stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded +for this forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves +and two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart +for frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, +and, in order to be near her relations, she also came to Hatcham, +and established herself there in close neighbourhood to them. +She had then with her only a son and a daughter, those known +to the poet's friends as Uncle Reuben and Aunt Jemima; +respectively nine years, and one year, older than he. +`Aunt Jemima' married not long afterwards, and is chiefly remembered +as having been very amiable, and, in early youth, to use her nephew's words, +`as beautiful as the day;' but kindly, merry `Uncle Reuben', +then clerk in the Rothschilds' London bank,* became a conspicuous member +of the family circle. This does not mean that the poet was ever +indebted to him for pecuniary help; and it is desirable that this +should be understood, since it has been confidently asserted that he was so. +So long as he was dependent at all, he depended exclusively on his father. +Even the use of his uncle's horse, which might have been accepted +as a friendly concession on Mr. Reuben's part, did not really represent one. +The animal stood, as I have said, in Mr. Browning's stable, +and it was groomed by his gardener. The promise of these conveniences +had induced Reuben Browning to buy a horse instead of continuing to hire one. +He could only ride it on a few days of the week, and it was rather a gain +than a loss to him that so good a horseman as his nephew should exercise it +during the interval. + +-- +* This uncle's name, and his business relations with the great Jewish firm, + have contributed to the mistaken theory of the poet's descent. +-- + +Uncle Reuben was not a great appreciator of poetry -- at all events +of his nephew's; and an irreverent remark on `Sordello', imputed to +a more eminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, +from him. But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that +he was a good linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. +He was also, apparently, an accomplished classic. Lord Beaconsfield +is said to have declared that the inscription on a silver inkstand, +presented to the daughter of Lionel Rothschild on her marriage, +by the clerks at New Court, `was the most appropriate thing +he had ever come across;' and that whoever had selected it must be +one of the first Latin scholars of the day. It was Mr. Reuben Browning. + +Another favourite uncle was William Shergold Browning, +though less intimate with his nephew and niece than he would have become +if he had not married while they were still children, and settled in Paris, +where his father's interest had placed him in the Rothschild house. +He is known by his `History of the Huguenots', a work, we are told, +`full of research, with a reference to contemporary literature +for almost every occurrence mentioned or referred to.' +He also wrote the `Provost of Paris', and `Hoel Morven', +historical novels, and `Leisure Hours', a collection of miscellanies; +and was a contributor for some years to the `Gentleman's Magazine'. +It was chiefly from this uncle that Miss Browning and her brother +heard the now often-repeated stories of their probable ancestors, +Micaiah Browning, who distinguished himself at the siege of Derry, +and that commander of the ship `Holy Ghost' who conveyed Henry V. to France +before the battle of Agincourt, and received the coat-of-arms, +with its emblematic waves, in reward for his service. Robert Browning +was also indebted to him for the acquaintance of M. de Ripert-Monclar; +for he was on friendly terms with the uncle of the young count, +the Marquis de Fortia, a learned man and member of the Institut, +and gave a letter of introduction -- actually, I believe, +to his brother Reuben -- at the Marquis's request.* + +-- +* A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning, + graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, + and is now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name + first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son, + while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment, + connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate + with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much. +-- + +The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in +his high estimate of the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. +On one occasion he took his brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. +An earlier and much attached friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, +cousin to the noted physician Dr. Blundell. He enabled +the young Robert, whom he knew from the age of sixteen, +to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and this aroused in him +a considerable interest in the sciences connected with medicine, +though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge of either disease +or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into his life. +A Captain Lloyd is indirectly associated with `The Flight of the Duchess'. +That poem was not completed according to its original plan; +and it was the always welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentleman +which arrested its completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered +how the click of the garden gate, and the sight of the familiar figure +advancing towards the house, had broken in upon his work +and dispelled its first inspiration. + +The appearance of `Paracelsus' did not give the young poet +his just place in popular judgment and public esteem. +A generation was to pass before this was conceded to him. +But it compelled his recognition by the leading or rising literary men +of the day; and a fuller and more varied social life now opened before him. +The names of Serjeant Talfourd, Horne, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall (Procter), +Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Eliot Warburton, Dickens, Wordsworth, +and Walter Savage Landor, represent, with that of Forster, +some of the acquaintances made, or the friendships begun, at this period. +Prominent among the friends that were to be, was also Archer Gurney, +well known in later life as the Rev. Archer Gurney, +and chaplain to the British embassy in Paris. His sympathies were at present +largely absorbed by politics. He was contesting the representation +of some county, on the Conservative side; but he took a very vivid interest +in Mr. Browning's poems; and this perhaps fixes the beginning of the intimacy +at a somewhat later date; since a pretty story by which it was illustrated +connects itself with the publication of `Bells and Pomegranates'. +He himself wrote dramas and poems. Sir John, afterwards Lord, Hanmer +was also much attracted by the young poet, who spent a pleasant week with him +at Bettisfield Park. He was the author of a volume entitled +`Fra Cipollo and other Poems', from which the motto of `Colombe's Birthday' +was subsequently taken. + +The friends, old and new, met in the informal manner of those days, +at afternoon dinners, or later suppers, at the houses of Mr. Fox, +Serjeant Talfourd, and, as we shall see, Mr. Macready; and Mr. Fox's daughter, +then only a little girl, but intelligent and observant for her years, +well remembers the pleasant gatherings at which she was allowed to assist, +when first performances of plays, or first readings of plays and poems, +had brought some of the younger and more ardent spirits together. +Miss Flower, also, takes her place in the literary group. +Her sister had married in 1834, and left her free to live for her own pursuits +and her own friends; and Mr. Browning must have seen more of her then +than was possible in his boyish days. + +None, however, of these intimacies were, at the time, +so important to him as that formed with the great actor Macready. +They were introduced to each other by Mr. Fox early in the winter of 1835-6; +the meeting is thus chronicled in Macready's diary, November 27.* + +-- +* `Macready's Reminiscences', edited by Sir Frederick Pollock; 1875. +-- + +== +`Went from chambers to dine with Rev. William Fox, Bayswater. . . . +Mr. Robert Browning, the author of `Paracelsus', came in after dinner; +I was very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence. . . . +I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve +my acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, +as gratified by the proposal, wished to send me his book; +we exchanged cards and parted.' +== + +On December 7 he writes: + +== +`Read `Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, +feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer can scarcely fail +to be a leading spirit of his time. . . .' +== + +He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, +for the last evening of the year; and again refers to him +under date of December 31. + +== +`. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning, +and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; +his simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions +from all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet +than any man I ever saw.' +== + +This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together +for the first time. The journey to Elstree was then performed by coach, +and the two young men met at the `Blue Posts', where, with one or more +of Mr. Macready's other guests, they waited for the coach to start. +They eyed each other with interest, both being striking in their way, +and neither knowing who the other was. When the introduction took place +at Macready's house, Mr. Forster supplemented it by saying: +`Did you see a little notice of you I wrote in the `Examiner'?' +The two names will now be constantly associated in Macready's diary, +which, except for Mr. Browning's own casual utterances, +is almost our only record of his literary and social life +during the next two years. + +It was at Elm Place that Mr. Browning first met Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, +then a neighbour of Mr. Macready, residing with her mother at Barham Lodge. +Miss Haworth was still a young woman, but her love and talent +for art and literature made her a fitting member of the genial circle +to which Mr. Browning belonged; and she and the poet soon became fast friends. +Her first name appears as `Eyebright' in `Sordello'. His letters to her, +returned after her death by her brother, Mr. Frederick Haworth, +supply valuable records of his experiences and of his feelings +at one very interesting, and one deeply sorrowful, period of his history. +She was a thoroughly kindly, as well as gifted woman, and much appreciated +by those of the poet's friends who knew her as a resident in London +during her last years. A portrait which she took of him in 1874 +is considered by some persons very good. + +At about this time also, and probably through Miss Haworth, +he became acquainted with Miss Martineau. + +Soon after his introduction to Macready, if not before, +Mr. Browning became busy with the thought of writing for the stage. +The diary has this entry for February 16, 1836: + +== +`Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot of a tragedy, +which Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. +He said that I had BIT him by my performance of Othello, +and I told him I hoped I should make the blood come. +It would indeed be some recompense for the miseries, the humiliations, +the heart-sickening disgusts which I have endured in my profession, +if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit of poetry +whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded drama. +May it be!' +== + +But Narses was abandoned, and the more serious inspiration +and more definite motive were to come later. They connect themselves +with one of the pleasant social occurrences which must have lived +in the young poet's memory. On May 26 `Ion' had been performed +for the first time and with great success, Mr. Macready sustaining +the principal part; and the great actor and a number of their common friends +had met at supper at Serjeant Talfourd's house to celebrate the occasion. +The party included Wordsworth and Landor, both of whom Mr. Browning then met +for the first time. Toasts flew right and left. Mr. Browning's health +was proposed by Serjeant Talfourd as that of the youngest poet of England, +and Wordsworth responded to the appeal with very kindly courtesy. +The conversation afterwards turned upon plays, and Macready, who had ignored +a half-joking question of Miss Mitford, whether, if she wrote one, +he would act in it, overtook Browning as they were leaving the house, +and said, `Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America.' +The reply was, `Shall it be historical and English; what do you say +to a drama on Strafford?' + +This ready response on the poet's part showed that Strafford, +as a dramatic subject, had been occupying his thoughts. +The subject was in the air, because Forster was then bringing out +a life of that statesman, with others belonging to the same period. +It was more than in the air, so far as Browning was concerned, +because his friend had been disabled, either through sickness or sorrow, +from finishing this volume by the appointed time, and he, as well he might, +had largely helped him in its completion. It was, however, +not till August 3 that Macready wrote in his diary: + +== +`Forster told me that Browning had fixed on Strafford +for the subject of a tragedy; he could not have hit upon one +that I could have more readily concurred in.' +== + +A previous entry of May 30, the occasion of which is only implied, +shows with how high an estimate of Mr. Browning's intellectual importance +Macready's professional relations to him began. + +== +`Arriving at chambers, I found a note from Browning. What can I say upon it? +It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and cares of years: +it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest, honour +I have through life received.' +== + +The estimate maintained itself in reference to the value +of Mr. Browning's work, since he wrote on March 13, 1837: + +== +`Read before dinner a few pages of `Paracelsus', which raises my wonder +the more I read it. . . . Looked over two plays, which it was not possible +to read, hardly as I tried. . . . Read some scenes in `Strafford', +which restore one to the world of sense and feeling once again.' +== + +But as the day of the performance drew near, he became at once +more anxious and more critical. An entry of April 28 +comments somewhat sharply on the dramatic faults of `Strafford', +besides declaring the writer's belief that the only chance for it +is in the acting, which, `by possibility, might carry it to the end +without disapprobation,' though he dares not hope without opposition. +It is quite conceivable that his first complete study of the play, +and first rehearsal of it, brought to light deficiencies +which had previously escaped him; but so complete a change of sentiment +points also to private causes of uneasiness and irritation; and, perhaps, +to the knowledge that its being saved by collective good acting +was out of the question. + +`Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on May 1. +Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Fox after one of the last rehearsals: + +== + May Day, Lincoln's Inn Fields. + +Dear Sir, -- All my endeavours to procure a copy before this morning +have been fruitless. I send the first book of the first bundle. +PRAY look over it -- the alterations to-night will be considerable. +The complexion of the piece is, I grieve to say, `perfect gallows' just now -- +our KING, Mr. Dale, being . . . but you'll see him, and, I fear, +not much applaud. + Your unworthy son, in things literary, + Robert Browning. + +P.S. (in pencil). -- A most unnecessary desire, but urged on me +by Messrs. Longman: no notice on Str. in to-night's True Sun,* +lest the other papers be jealous!!! + +-- +* Mr. Fox reviewed `Strafford' in the `True Sun'. +-- +== + +A second letter, undated, but evidently written a day or two later, +refers to the promised notice, which had then appeared. + +== + Tuesday Night. + +No words can express my feelings: I happen to be much annoyed and unwell -- +but your most generous notice has almost made `my soul well and happy now.' + +I thank you, my most kind, most constant friend, from my heart +for your goodness -- which is brave enough, just now. + I am ever and increasingly yours, + Robert Browning. + +You will be glad to see me on the earliest occasion, will you not? +I shall certainly come. +== + +A letter from Miss Flower to Miss Sarah Fox (sister to the Rev. William Fox), +at Norwich, contains the following passage, which evidently continues +a chapter of London news: + +== +`Then `Strafford'; were you not pleased to hear of the success of one +you must, I think, remember a very little boy, years ago. +If not, you have often heard us speak of Robert Browning: +and it is a great deal to have accomplished a successful tragedy, +although he seems a good deal annoyed at the go of things behind the scenes, +and declares he will never write a play again, as long as he lives. +You have no idea of the ignorance and obstinacy of the whole set, +with here and there an exception; think of his having to write out the meaning +of the word `impeachment', as some of them thought it meant `poaching'.' +== + +On the first night, indeed, the fate of `Strafford' hung in the balance; +it was saved by Macready and Miss Helen Faucit. After this they must have +been better supported, as it was received on the second night with enthusiasm +by a full house. The catastrophe came after the fifth performance, +with the desertion of the actor who had sustained the part of Pym. +We cannot now judge whether, even under favourable circumstances, +the play would have had as long a run as was intended; +but the casting vote in favour of this view is given by the conduct +of Mr. Osbaldistone, the manager, when it was submitted to him. +The diary says, March 30, that he caught at it with avidity, +and agreed to produce it without delay. The terms he offered to the author +must also have been considered favourable in those days. + +The play was published in April by Longman, this time +not at the author's expense; but it brought no return +either to him or to his publisher. It was dedicated +`in all affectionate admiration' to William C. Macready. + +We gain some personal glimpses of the Browning of 1835-6; +one especially through Mrs. Bridell-Fox, who thus describes +her first meeting with him: + +== +`I remember . . . when Mr. Browning entered the drawing-room, +with a quick light step; and on hearing from me that my father was out, +and in fact that nobody was at home but myself, he said: +"It's my birthday to-day; I'll wait till they come in," +and sitting down to the piano, he added: "If it won't disturb you, +I'll play till they do." And as he turned to the instrument, +the bells of some neighbouring church suddenly burst out +with a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, +as if in response to the remark that it was his birthday. +He was then slim and dark, and very handsome; and -- may I hint it -- +just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves +and such things: quite "the glass of fashion and the mould of form." +But full of ambition, eager for success, eager for fame, and, what's more, +determined to conquer fame and to achieve success.' +== + +I do not think his memory ever taxed him with foppishness, +though he may have had the innocent personal vanity of an attractive young man +at his first period of much seeing and being seen; but all we know of him +at that time bears out the impression Mrs. Fox conveys, +of a joyous, artless confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, +but quickly reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences +had freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. +The self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this side +it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for kindness, +and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other men. +His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in this way. +He was very attractive to women and, as we have seen, +warmly loved by very various types of men; but, except in its poetic sense, +his emotional nature was by no means then in the ascendant: a fact +difficult to realize when we remember the passion of his childhood's love +for mother and home, and the new and deep capabilities of affection +to be developed in future days. The poet's soul in him was feeling its wings; +the realities of life had not yet begun to weight them. + +We see him again at the `Ion' supper, in the grace and modesty +with which he received the honours then adjudged to him. +The testimony has been said to come from Miss Mitford, but may easily +have been supplied by Miss Haworth, who was also present on this occasion. + +Mr. Browning's impulse towards play-writing had not, as we have seen, +begun with `Strafford'. It was still very far from being exhausted. +And though he had struck out for himself another line of dramatic activity, +his love for the higher theatrical life, and the legitimate inducements +of the more lucrative and not necessarily less noble form of composition, +might ultimately in some degree have prevailed with him +if circumstances had been such as to educate his theatrical capabilities, +and to reward them. His first acted drama was, however, +an interlude to the production of the important group of poems +which was to be completed by `Sordello'; and he alludes to this later work +in an also discarded preface to `Strafford', as one on which +he had for some time been engaged. He even characterizes the Tragedy +as an attempt `to freshen a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy natures +of a grand epoch.' `Sordello' again occupied him during the remainder of 1837 +and the beginning of 1838; and by the spring of this year +he must have been thankful to vary the scene and mode of his labours +by means of a first visit to Italy. He announces his impending journey, +with its immediate plan and purpose, in the following note: + +== + To John Robertson, Esq. + + Good Friday, 1838. + +Dear Sir, -- I was not fortunate enough to find you the day before yesterday +-- and must tell you very hurriedly that I sail this morning for Venice -- +intending to finish my poem among the scenes it describes. +I shall have your good wishes I know. + Believe me, in return, + Dear sir, + Yours faithfully and obliged, + Robert Browning. +== + +Mr. John Robertson had influence with the `Westminster Review', +either as editor, or member of its staff. He had been introduced +to Mr. Browning by Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of `Paracelsus', +had promised careful attention for `Sordello'; but, when the time approached, +he made conditions of early reading, &c., which Mr. Browning thought +so unfair towards other magazines that he refused to fulfil them. +He lost his review, and the goodwill of its intending writer; +and even Miss Martineau was ever afterwards cooler towards him, +though his attitude in the matter had been in some degree +prompted by a chivalrous partisanship for her. + + + + +Chapter 7 + +1838-1841 + + First Italian Journey -- Letters to Miss Haworth -- Mr. John Kenyon -- + `Sordello' -- Letter to Miss Flower -- `Pippa Passes' -- + `Bells and Pomegranates'. + + + +Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the `Norham Castle', +a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himself +the only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, +and some characteristic personal details, are given in the following letter +to Miss Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written +before that year's summer had closed. + +== + Tuesday Evening. + +Dear Miss Haworth, -- Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom +and notice the clear little honey-drop depending from every flower. +I have just found it out to my no small satisfaction, -- a bee's breakfast. +I only answer for the long-blossomed sort, though, -- indeed, +for this plant in my room. Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. +All this while I forget that you will perhaps never guess +the good of the discovery: I have, you are to know, such a love +for flowers and leaves -- some leaves -- that I every now and then, +in an impatience at being able to possess myself of them thoroughly, +to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent, -- bite them to bits -- +so there will be some sense in that. How I remember the flowers -- +even grasses -- of places I have seen! Some one flower or weed, I should say, +that gets some strangehow connected with them. + +Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park, +for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland. + +Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receive +last week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write, -- +for none of your written reasons, however. You will see `Sordello' +in a trice, if the fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent +(except a scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' +the Straits of Gibraltar) -- but I did hammer out some four, +two of which are addressed to you, two to the Queen* -- +the whole to go in Book III -- perhaps. I called you `Eyebright' -- +meaning a simple and sad sort of translation of "Euphrasia" +into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, or Fanny, was -- +and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there is anything in them +to care for, good or bad. Shall I say `Eyebright'? + +-- +* I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen. +-- + +I was disappointed in one thing, Canova. + +What companions should I have? + +The story of the ship must have reached you `with a difference' +as Ophelia says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it to Forster, +I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over &c., &c., &c. -- +As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captain woke me +one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keel uppermost +half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to some floating canvas, +and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, +and the little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. +Our men made the wreck fast in high glee at having `new trousers +out of the sails,' and quite sure she was a French boat, +broken from her moorings at Algiers, close by. Ropes were next hove +(hang this sea-talk!) round her stanchions, and after a quarter of an hour's +pushing at the capstan, the vessel righted suddenly, +one dead body floating out; five more were in the forecastle, +and had probably been there a month under a blazing African sun -- +don't imagine the wretched state of things. They were, these six, +the `watch below' -- (I give you the result of the day's observation) -- +the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard at first. +One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was a smuggler +bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionate guns, +taking up the whole deck, which was convex and -- nay, look you! +(a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck +is here introduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square +the place where the bodies lay. (All the `bulwarks' or sides of the top, +carried away by the waves.) Well, the sailors covered up the hatchway, +broke up the aft-deck, hauled up tobacco and cigars, such heaps of them, +and then bale after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, +till the captain was half-frightened -- he would get at the ship's papers, +he said; so these poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, +and pitched into the sea, the very sailors calling to each other +to `cover the faces', -- no papers of importance were found, however, +but fifteen swords, powder and ball enough for a dozen such boats, +and bundles of cotton, &c., that would have taken a day to get out, +but the captain vowed that after five o'clock she should be cut adrift: +accordingly she was cast loose, not a third of her cargo having been touched; +and you hardly can conceive the strange sight when the battered hulk +turned round, actually, and looked at us, and then reeled off, +like a mutilated creature from some scoundrel French surgeon's lecture-table, +into the most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world: +there; only thank me for not taking you at your word, +and giving you the whole `story'. -- `What I did?' I went to Trieste, +then Venice -- then through Treviso and Bassano to the mountains, +delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you will see. +Then to Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, +Innspruck (the Tyrol), Munich, Salzburg in Franconia, Frankfort and Mayence; +down the Rhine to Cologne, then to Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Antwerp -- +then home. Shall you come to town, anywhere near town, soon? +I shall be off again as soon as my book is out, whenever that will be. + +I never read that book of Miss Martineau's, so can't understand what you mean. +Macready is looking well; I just saw him the other day for a minute +after the play; his Kitely was Kitely -- superb from his flat cap +down to his shining shoes. I saw very few Italians, `to know', that is. +Those I did see I liked. Your friend Pepoli has been lecturing here, +has he not? + +I shall be vexed if you don't write soon, a long Elstree letter. +What are you doing, writing -- drawing? + Ever yours truly + R. B. +To Miss Haworth, + Barham Lodge, Elstree. +== + +Miss Browning's account of this experience, supplied from +memory of her brother's letters and conversations, contains some +vivid supplementary details. The drifting away of the wreck +put probably no effective distance between it and the ship; +hence the necessity of `sailing away' from it. + +== +`Of the dead pirates, one had his hands clasped as if praying; +another, a severe gash in his head. The captain burnt disinfectants +and blew gunpowder, before venturing on board, but even then, +he, a powerful man, turned very sick with the smell and sight. +They stayed one whole day by the side, but the sailors, in spite of orders, +began to plunder the cigars, &c. The captain said privately to Robert, +"I cannot restrain my men, and they will bring the plague into our ship, +so I mean quietly in the night to sail away." Robert took +two cutlasses and a dagger; they were of the coarsest workmanship, +intended for use. At the end of one of the sheaths was a heavy bullet, +so that it could be used as a sling. The day after, to their great relief, +a heavy rain fell and cleansed the ship. Captain Davidson reported +the sight of the wreck and its condition as soon as he arrived at Trieste.' +== + +Miss Browning also relates that the weather was stormy in the Bay of Biscay, +and for the first fortnight her brother suffered terribly. The captain +supported him on to the deck as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, +that he might not lose the sight. He recovered, as we know, +sufficiently to write `How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'; +but we can imagine in what revulsion of feeling towards firm land +and healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born in him. +The poem was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simboli trasportati +al Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his; +and, in spite of perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, +the pencil dints are still visible. The little poem +`Home Thoughts from the Sea' was written at the same time, +and in the same manner. + +By the time they reached Trieste, the captain, a rough north-countryman, +had become so attached to Mr. Browning that he offered him +a free passage to Constantinople; and after they had parted, +carefully preserved, by way of remembrance, a pair of very old gloves +worn by him on deck. Mr. Browning might, on such an occasion, +have dispensed with gloves altogether; but it was one of his peculiarities +that he could never endure to be out of doors with uncovered hands. +The captain also showed his friendly feeling on his return to England +by bringing to Miss Browning, whom he had heard of through her brother, +a present of six bottles of attar of roses. + +The inspirations of Asolo and Venice appear in `Pippa Passes' +and `In a Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's +subsequent vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; +and the magnetism which Asolo was to exercise upon him, +only fully asserted itself at a much later time. + +A second letter to Miss Haworth is undated, but may have been written +at any period of this or the ensuing year. + +== +I have received, a couple of weeks since, a present -- an album +large and gaping, and as Cibber's Richard says of the `fair Elizabeth': +`My heart is empty -- she shall fill it' -- so say I (impudently?) +of my grand trouble-table, which holds a sketch or two +by my fine fellow Monclar, one lithograph -- his own face of faces, -- +`all the rest was amethyst.' F. H. everywhere! not a soul beside +`in the chrystal silence there,' and it locks, this album; +now, don't shower drawings on M., who has so many advantages over me as it is: +or at least don't bid ME of all others say what he is to have. + +The `Master' is somebody you don't know, W. J. Fox, +a magnificent and poetical nature, who used to write in reviews +when I was a boy, and to whom my verses, a bookful, written at the ripe age +of twelve and thirteen, were shown: which verses he praised not a little; +which praise comforted me not a little. Then I lost sight of him +for years and years; then I published ANONYMOUSLY a little poem -- +which he, to my inexpressible delight, praised and expounded +in a gallant article in a magazine of which he was the editor; +then I found him out again; he got a publisher for `Paracelsus' +(I read it to him in manuscript) and is in short `my literary father'. +Pretty nearly the same thing did he for Miss Martineau, +as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the `talk', +table-talk was about -- I think she must have told you +the results of the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, +and that day's, the dinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. +She is to give me advice about my worldly concerns, and not before I need it! + +I cannot say or sing the pleasure your way of writing gives me -- do go on, +and tell me all sorts of things, `the story' for a beginning; +but your moralisings on `your age' and the rest, are -- now what ARE they? +not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about: +they are `Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia), +for teaching me that word. + +I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar +looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; +he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he HAS taken!) and very like +he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . . + +Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M---- to help you! +I am going to begin the finishing `Sordello' -- and to begin thinking +a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms +on `Strafford') and I want to have ANOTHER tragedy in prospect, +I write best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, +when I learned that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene +founded on my story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: +and I accordingly throw it up. I want a subject of the most wild +and passionate love, to contrast with the one I mean to have ready +in a short time. I have many half-conceptions, floating fancies: +give me your notion of a thorough self-devotement, self-forgetting; +should it be a woman who loves thus, or a man? What circumstances +will best draw out, set forth this feeling? . . . +== + +The tragedies in question were to be `King Victor and King Charles', +and `The Return of the Druses'. + +This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work; +it is also very significant of the small place which love +had hitherto occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal +to Miss Haworth's `notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, +even imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. +The experience was still distant from him in point of time. +In circumstance he was nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 +that he became acquainted with Mr. Kenyon. + +When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted +by a pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, +asked leave to address to him a few questions: `Was his father's name Robert? +had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, +and was he still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, +he went on to say that Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, +and though they had lost sight of each other in after-life, +he had never forgotten his old playmate, but even alluded to him +in a little book which he had published a few years before.* + +-- +* The volume is entitled `Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833), + and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays, + and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted. +-- + +The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered +a schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, `Certainly! This is his face,' +and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized +that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon +proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, +in a letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: +`He was one of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy +for excellence of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, +of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with +most of my contemporaries of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house +that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there +when he came to town. + +In 1840 `Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, +by far the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. +This seemed, indeed, a condition of its peculiar character. +It had lain much deeper in the author's mind than the various slighter works +which were thrown off in the course of its inception. +We know from the preface to `Strafford' that it must have been begun +soon after `Paracelsus'. Its plan may have belonged to a still earlier date; +for it connects itself with `Pauline' as the history of a poetic soul; +with both the earlier poems, as the manifestation of the self-conscious +spiritual ambitions which were involved in that history. +This first imaginative mood was also outgrowing itself +in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedies written +before the conclusion of `Sordello' impress us as the product +of a different mental state -- as the work of a more balanced imagination +and a more mature mind. + +It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet +became embodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical character +of the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginative +psychological treatment, or whether the circumstances among which he moved +seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type. +The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his testimony +to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue. +That period of Italian history must also have assumed, +if it did not already possess, a great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, +since he studied no less than thirty works upon it, +which were to contribute little more to his dramatic picture +than what he calls `decoration', or `background'. But the one guide +which he has given us to the reading of the poem is his assertion +that its historical circumstance is only to be regarded as background; +and the extent to which he identified himself with the figure of Sordello +has been proved by his continued belief that its prominence +was throughout maintained. He could still declare, so late as 1863, +in his preface to the reprint of the work, that his `stress' in writing it +had lain `on the incidents in the development of a soul, little else' +being to his mind `worth study'. I cannot therefore help thinking +that recent investigations of the life and character of the actual poet, +however in themselves praiseworthy and interesting, have been often +in some degree a mistake; because, directly or indirectly, +they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to an historical reality, +which his author had grasped, as far as was then possible, +but to which he was never intended to conform. + +Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, +the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other men -- +the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower +into the larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; +and this takes place in accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief +that poetry is the appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; +that the true poet must be their exponent. The work is thus obviously, +in point of moral utterance, an advance on `Pauline'. +Its metaphysics are, also, more distinctly formulated than those +of either `Pauline' or `Paracelsus'; and the frequent use of the term Will +in its metaphysical sense so strongly points to German associations +that it is difficult to realize their absence, then and always, +from Mr. Browning's mind. But he was emphatic in his assurance that +he knew neither the German philosophers nor their reflection in Coleridge, +who would have seemed a likely medium between them and him. Miss Martineau +once said to him that he had no need to study German thought, since his mind +was German enough -- by which she possibly meant too German -- already. + +The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* +the picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, +and, perhaps for this very reason, never so fully displayed +in any subsequent work. Mr. Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it +could not preclude the consciousness of the many imaginative beauties +which its unpopular character had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, +some years ago, that `Sordello' was represented in a collection +of descriptive passages which a friend of his was proposing to make. +`There is a great deal of that in it,' he said, `and it has always +been overlooked.' + +-- +* The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I believe, + by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of `The Ring and the Book', + and I do not like to use it without saying so. But it is one of those + which must have spontaneously suggested themselves + to many other of Mr. Browning's readers. +-- + +It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added themselves +on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the reason of it +is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some comments +on the wording of `Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, +then quite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth, +who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, +but without making quite clear to him the source from which they sprang. +He took the criticism much more seriously than it deserved, +and condensed the language of this his next important publication +into what was nearly its present form. + +In leaving `Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage +of Mr. Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic +in the sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be. +`Festus' and `Salinguerra' have already given promise +of the world of `Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. +They will be inspired by every variety of conscious motive, +but never again by the old (real or imagined) self-centred, +self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already lost the sense of disparity +between the man and the poet; for the Browning of `Sordello' +was growing older, while the defects of the poem were in many respects +those of youth. In `Pippa Passes', published one year later, +the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has entered +on the inheritance of the other. + +Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls +this `lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; +but the quality of humour is displayed in it for the first time; +as also a strongly marked philosophy of life -- or more properly, +of association -- from which its idea and development are derived. +In spite, however, of these evidences of general maturity, +Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish in personal intercourse, +if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower written at about the same time. + +-- +* These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from + Mr. Gosse's `Personalia'. +-- + +== + Monday night, March 9 (? 1841). + +My dear Miss Flower, -- I have this moment received your very kind note -- +of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are +somewhat lightened already (confess -- nay `confess' is vile -- +you will be rejoiced to holla from the house-top) -- will go on, +or rather go off, lightening, and will be -- oh, where WILL they be +half a dozen years hence? + +Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, +you and Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects -- +mean to song-write, play-write forthwith, -- and, believe me, +dear Miss Flower, + Yours ever faithfully, + Robert Browning. + +By the way, you speak of `Pippa' -- could we not make some arrangement +about it? The lyrics WANT your music -- five or six in all -- how say you? +When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode -- +but `all goeth by God's Will.' +== + +The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem, +inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. +I give its first two verses: + +== +On a Certain Critique on `Pippa Passes'. + + (Query -- Passes what? -- the critic's comprehension.) + + +Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, +Automatons of which the world is full, +Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, +That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, +Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, +A mighty truth now wondrously displayed. + +A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, +Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong +The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along +His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies -- +Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, +Against a mountain he can neither double +Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, +Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he +Takes it into his horny head to swear +There's no such thing as any mountain there. +== + +The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; +but these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation +which must have made them a welcome tribute to friendship. + +There seems to have been little respectful criticism of `Pippa Passes'; +it is less surprising that there should have been very little of `Sordello'. +Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of earnest appreciators, +foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable notice of these two works, +quoted from an `Eclectic Review' of 1847, in Dr. Furnivall's `Bibliography'. +I am also told that the series of poems which was next to appear +was enthusiastically greeted by some poets and painters +of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on a period +of general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of his life, +and much that has since become most deservedly popular in his work. + +`Pippa Passes' had appeared as the first instalment +of `Bells and Pomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. +This poem, and the two tragedies, `King Victor and King Charles' and +`The Return of the Druses' -- first christened `Mansoor, the Hierophant' -- +were lying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, +perhaps not very vigorously sought, a publisher for them. + +== +`One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon, +the publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out +some editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively cheap form, +and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems as pamphlets, +using this cheap type, the expense would be very inconsiderable. +The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each poem should form +a separate brochure of just one sheet -- sixteen pages in double columns -- +the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or fifteen pounds. +In this fashion began the celebrated series of `Bells and Pomegranates', +eight numbers of which, a perfect treasury of fine poetry, +came out successively between 1841 and 1846. `Pippa Passes' led the way, +and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale being inconsiderable, +at a shilling, which greatly encouraged the sale; and so, slowly, +up to half-a-crown, at which the price of each number finally rested.' +== + +Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series +are announced in the following preface to `Pippa Passes', +of which, in later editions, only the dedicatory words appear: + +== +`Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter +I care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured people +applauded it: -- ever since, I have been desirous of doing +something in the same way that should better reward their attention. +What follows I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, +to come out at intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode +in which they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. +Of course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; +and to provide against a certain and but too possible contingency, +let me hasten to say now -- what, if I were sure of success, +I would try to say circumstantially enough at the close -- +that I dedicate my best intentions most admiringly to the author of "Ion" -- +most affectionately to Serjeant Talfourd.' +== + +A necessary explanation of the general title was reserved for the last number: +and does something towards justifying the popular impression +that Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight +from his readers. + +== +`Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": +and I take the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, +that I only meant by that title to indicate an endeavour +towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, +sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, +thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, +that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical +(and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, +letting authority alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, +would sufficiently convey the desired meaning. "Faith and good works" +is another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: +yet Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, +and Raffaelle crowned his Theology (in the `Camera della Segnatura') +with blossoms of the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure +to come after, and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle buone opere -- +il qual Pomogranato fu pero\ usato nelle vesti del Pontefice +appresso gli Ebrei."' +== + +The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers +of `Bells and Pomegranates' were: + + I. Pippa Passes. 1841. + II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842. + III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842. + Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse; + III. My Wife Gertrude. [`Boot and Saddle'.] + Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France. + Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish). + In a Gondola. + Artemis Prologuizes. + Waring; I.; II. + Queen Worship; I. Rudel and The Lady of Tripoli; II. Cristina. + Madhouse Cells; I. [Johannes Agricola.]; II. [Porphyria.] + Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 1842. + The Pied Piper of Hamelin; a Child's Story. + IV. The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. 1843. + V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy, in Three Acts. 1843. + [Second Edition, same year.] + VI. Colombe's Birthday. A Play, in Five Acts. 1844. + VII. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845. + `How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (16--.)' + Pictor Ignotus. (Florence, 15--.) + Italy in England. + England in Italy. (Piano di Sorrento.) + The Lost Leader. + The Lost Mistress. + Home Thoughts, from Abroad. + The Tomb at St. Praxed's: (Rome, 15--.) + Garden Fancies; I. The Flower's Name; + II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. + France and Spain; I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime); + II. Spain -- The Confessional. + The Flight of the Duchess. + Earth's Immortalities. + Song. (`Nay but you, who do not love her.') + The Boy and the Angel. + Night and Morning; I. Night; II. Morning. + Claret and Tokay. + Saul. (Part I.) + Time's Revenges. + The Glove. (Peter Ronsard loquitur.) + VIII. and last. Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy. 1846. + +This publication has seemed entitled to a detailed notice, +because it is practically extinct, and because its nature and circumstance +confer on it a biographical interest not possessed by any subsequent issue +of Mr. Browning's works. The dramas and poems of which it is composed +belong to that more mature period of the author's life, in which +the analysis of his work ceases to form a necessary part of his history. +Some few of them, however, are significant to it; and this is notably the case +with `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'. + + + + +Chapter 8 + +1841-1844 + + `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' -- Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady Martin -- + Charles Dickens -- Other Dramas and Minor Poems -- + Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower -- + Second Italian Journey; Naples -- E. J. Trelawney -- Stendhal. + + + +`A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was written for Macready, who meant to perform +the principal part; and we may conclude that the appeal for it was urgent, +since it was composed in the space of four or five days. +Macready's journals must have contained a fuller reference +to both the play and its performance (at Drury Lane, February 1843) +than appears in published form; but considerable irritation had arisen +between him and Mr. Browning, and he possibly wrote something +which his editor, Sir Frederick Pollock, as the friend of both, +thought it best to omit. What occurred on this occasion +has been told in some detail by Mr. Gosse, and would not need repeating +if the question were only of re-telling it on the same authority, +in another person's words; but, through the kindness +of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hill, I am able to give Mr. Browning's +direct statement of the case, as also his expressed judgment upon it. +The statement was made more than forty years later than the events +to which it refers, but will, nevertheless, be best given +in its direct connection with them. + +The merits, or demerits, of `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' +had been freshly brought under discussion by its performance in London +through the action of the Browning Society, and in Washington +by Mr. Laurence Barrett; and it became the subject of a paragraph +in one of the theatrical articles prepared for the `Daily News'. +Mr. Hill was then editor of the paper, and when the article +came to him for revision, he thought it right to submit to Mr. Browning +the passages devoted to his tragedy, which embodied some then prevailing, +but, he strongly suspected, erroneous impressions concerning it. +The results of this kind and courteous proceeding appear +in the following letter. + +== + 19, Warwick Crescent: December 15, 1884. + +My dear Mr. Hill, -- It was kind and considerate of you +to suppress the paragraph which you send me, -- and of which +the publication would have been unpleasant for reasons quite other +than as regarding my own work, -- which exists to defend or accuse itself. +You will judge of the true reasons when I tell you the facts -- +so much of them as contradicts the statements of your critic -- +who, I suppose, has received a stimulus from the notice, in an American paper +which arrived last week, of Mr. Laurence Barrett's intention +`shortly to produce the play' in New York -- and subsequently in London: +so that `the failure' of forty-one years ago might be duly influential +at present -- or two years hence perhaps. The `mere amateurs' +are no high game. + +Macready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged +at the Haymarket, and retained it for Drury Lane, of which I was ignorant +that he was about to become the manager: he accepted it +`at the instigation' of nobody, -- and Charles Dickens was not in England +when he did so: it was read to him after his return, by Forster -- +and the glowing letter which contains his opinion of it, +although directed by him to be shown to myself, was never heard of +nor seen by me till printed in Forster's book some thirty years after. +When the Drury Lane season began, Macready informed me +that he should act the play when he had brought out two others -- +`The Patrician's Daughter', and `Plighted Troth': having done so, +he wrote to me that the former had been unsuccessful in money-drawing, +and the latter had `smashed his arrangements altogether': but he would +still produce my play. I had -- in my ignorance of certain symptoms +better understood by Macready's professional acquaintances -- +I had no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, +to `release him from his promise'; on the contrary, I should have fancied +that such a proposal was offensive. Soon after, Macready begged +that I would call on him: he said the play had been read to the actors +the day before, `and laughed at from beginning to end': +on my speaking my mind about this, he explained that the reading had been done +by the Prompter, a grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, +ill at ease in the love scenes, and that he would himself make amends +by reading the play next morning -- which he did, and very adequately -- +but apprised me that, in consequence of the state of his mind, +harassed by business and various trouble, the principal character +must be taken by Mr. Phelps; and again I failed to understand, -- +what Forster subsequently assured me was plain as the sun at noonday, -- +that to allow at Macready's Theatre any other than Macready +to play the principal part in a new piece was suicidal, -- and really believed +I was meeting his exigencies by accepting the substitution. +At the rehearsal, Macready announced that Mr. Phelps was ill, +and that he himself would read the part: on the third rehearsal, +Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and sat in a chair +while Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next morning +Mr. Phelps waylaid me at the stage-door to say, with much emotion, +that it never was intended that HE should be instrumental +in the success of a new tragedy, and that Macready would play Tresham +on the ground that himself, Phelps, was unable to do so. +He added that he could not expect me to waive such an advantage, -- +but that, if I were prepared to waive it, `he would take ether, +sit up all night, and have the words in his memory by next day.' +I bade him follow me to the green-room, and hear what I decided upon -- +which was that as Macready had given him the part, he should keep it: +this was on a Thursday; he rehearsed on Friday and Saturday, -- +the play being acted the same evening, -- OF THE FIFTH DAY AFTER +THE `READING' BY MACREADY. Macready at once wished to reduce +the importance of the `play', -- as he styled it in the bills, -- +tried to leave out so much of the text, that I baffled him +by getting it printed in four-and-twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. +He wanted me to call it `The Sister'! -- and I have before me, while I write, +the stage-acting copy, with two lines of his own insertion +to avoid the tragical ending -- Tresham was to announce his intention +of going into a monastery! all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, +and Macready alone, could produce a veritable `tragedy', unproduced before. +Not a shilling was spent on scenery or dresses -- and a striking scene +which had been used for the `Patrician's Daughter', did duty a second time. +If your critic considers this treatment of the play an instance of +`the failure of powerful and experienced actors' to ensure its success, -- +I can only say that my own opinion was shown by at once breaking off +a friendship of many years -- a friendship which had a right +to be plainly and simply told that the play I had contributed +as a proof of it, would through a change of circumstances, +no longer be to my friend's advantage, -- all I could possibly care for. +Only recently, when by the publication of Macready's journals +the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that time was made known, +could I in a measure understand his motives for such conduct -- and less +than ever understand why he so strangely disguised and disfigured them. +If `applause' means success, the play thus maimed and maltreated +was successful enough: it `made way' for Macready's own Benefit, +and the Theatre closed a fortnight after. + +Having kept silence for all these years, in spite of repeated explanations, +in the style of your critic's, that the play `failed in spite of +the best endeavours' &c. I hardly wish to revive a very painful matter: +on the other hand, -- as I have said; my play subsists, +and is as open to praise or blame as it was forty-one years ago: +is it necessary to search out what somebody or other, -- not improbably +a jealous adherent of Macready, `the only organizer of theatrical victories', +chose to say on the subject? If the characters are `abhorrent' +and `inscrutable' -- and the language conformable, -- they were so +when Dickens pronounced upon them, and will be so whenever the critic +pleases to re-consider them -- which, if he ever has an opportunity of doing, +apart from the printed copy, I can assure you is through no motion of mine. +This particular experience was sufficient: but the Play +is out of my power now; though amateurs and actors may do what they please. + +Of course, this being the true story, I should desire +that it were told THUS and no otherwise, if it must be told at all: +but NOT as a statement of mine, -- the substance of it +has been partly stated already by more than one qualified person, +and if I have been willing to let the poor matter drop, +surely there is no need that it should be gone into now +when Macready and his Athenaeum upholder are no longer able +to speak for themselves: this is just a word to you, dear Mr. Hill, +and may be brought under the notice of your critic if you think proper -- +but only for the facts -- not as a communication for the public. + +Yes, thank you, I am in full health, as you wish -- and I wish you +and Mrs. Hill, I assure you, all the good appropriate to the season. +My sister has completely recovered from her illness, and is grateful +for your enquiries. + +With best regards to Mrs. Hill, and an apology for this long letter, +which however, -- when once induced to write it, -- I could not well shorten, +-- believe me, + Yours truly ever + Robert Browning. +== + +I well remember Mr. Browning's telling me how, when he returned +to the green-room, on that critical day, he drove his hat +more firmly on to his head, and said to Macready, `I beg pardon, sir, +but you have given the part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied +that he should act it;' and how Macready, on hearing this, +crushed up the MS., and flung it on to the ground. He also admitted +that his own manner had been provocative; but he was indignant +at what he deemed the unjust treatment which Mr. Phelps had received. +The occasion of the next letter speaks for itself. + +== + December 21, 1884. + +My dear Mr. Hill, -- Your goodness must extend to letting me have +the last word -- one of sincere thanks. You cannot suppose +I doubted for a moment of a good-will which I have had abundant proof of. +I only took the occasion your considerate letter gave me, +to tell the simple truth which my forty years' silence is a sign +I would only tell on compulsion. I never thought your critic +had any less generous motive for alluding to the performance as he did +than that which he professes: he doubtless heard the account of the matter +which Macready and his intimates gave currency to at the time; and which, +being confined for a while to their limited number, I never chose to notice. +But of late years I have got to READ, -- not merely HEAR, -- +of the play's failure `which all the efforts of my friend the great actor +could not avert;' and the nonsense of this untruth gets hard to bear. +I told you the principal facts in the letter I very hastily wrote: +I could, had it been worth while, corroborate them by others in plenty, +and refer to the living witnesses -- Lady Martin, Mrs. Stirling, +and (I believe) Mr. Anderson: it was solely through the admirable loyalty +of the two former that . . . a play . . . deprived of every advantage, +in the way of scenery, dresses, and rehearsing -- proved -- +what Macready himself declared it to be -- `a complete success'. +SO he sent a servant to tell me, `in case there was a call for the author +at the end of the act' -- to which I replied that the author +had been too sick and sorry at the whole treatment of his play +to do any such thing. Such a call there truly WAS, +and Mr. Anderson had to come forward and `beg the author to come forward +if he were in the house -- a circumstance of which he was not aware:' +whereat the author laughed at him from a box just opposite. . . . +I would submit to anybody drawing a conclusion from one or two facts +past contradiction, whether that play could have thoroughly failed +which was not only not withdrawn at once but acted three nights +in the same week, and years afterwards, reproduced at his own theatre, +during my absence in Italy, by Mr. Phelps -- the person most completely aware +of the untoward circumstances which stood originally in the way of success. +Why not enquire how it happens that, this second time, +there was no doubt of the play's doing as well as plays ordinarily do? +for those were not the days of a `run'. + + . . . . . + +. . . This `last word' has indeed been an Aristophanic one +of fifty syllables: but I have spoken it, relieved myself, +and commend all that concerns me to the approved and valued friend +of whom I am proud to account myself in corresponding friendship, + His truly ever + Robert Browning. +== + +Mr. Browning also alludes to Mr. Phelps's acting as not only +not having been detrimental to the play, but having helped to save it, +in the conspiracy of circumstances which seemed to invoke its failure. +This was a mistake, since Macready had been anxious to resume the part, +and would have saved it, to say the least, more thoroughly. It must, +however, be remembered that the irritation which these letters express +was due much less to the nature of the facts recorded in them +than to the manner in which they had been brought before Mr. Browning's mind. +Writing on the subject to Lady Martin in February 1881, +he had spoken very temperately of Macready's treatment of his play, +while deprecating the injustice towards his own friendship +which its want of frankness involved: and many years before this, +the touch of a common sorrow had caused the old feeling, at least momentarily, +to well up again. The two met for the first time after these occurrences +when Mr. Browning had returned, a widower, from Italy. Mr. Macready, too, +had recently lost his wife; and Mr. Browning could only start forward, +grasp the hand of his old friend, and in a voice choked with emotion say, +`O Macready!' + +Lady Martin has spoken to me of the poet's attitude on the occasion +of this performance as being full of generous sympathy for those +who were working with him, as well as of the natural anxiety of a young author +for his own success. She also remains convinced that this sympathy +led him rather to over- than to under-rate the support he received. +She wrote concerning it in `Blackwood's Magazine', March 1881: + +== +`It seems but yesterday that I sat by his [Mr. Elton's] side +in the green-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful drama, +`A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'. As a rule Mr. Macready always read the new plays. +But owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was entrusted +on this occasion to the head prompter, -- a clever man in his way, +but wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, +Mr. Browning's meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines +were twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. +My "cruel father" [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. +He sat writhing and indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see +the real meaning of the verse. But somehow the mischief proved irreparable, +for a few of the actors during the rehearsals chose to continue +to misunderstand the text, and never took the interest in the play +which they would have done had Mr. Macready read it.' +== + +Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the widening +perspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare +as he did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred, +that her `PERFECT behaviour as a woman' and her `admirable playing +as an actress' had been (or at all events were) to him +`the one gratifying circumstance connected with it.' + +He also felt it a just cause of bitterness that the letter +from Charles Dickens,* which conveyed his almost passionate admiration of +`A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', and was clearly written to Mr. Forster in order +that it might be seen, was withheld for thirty years from his knowledge, +and that of the public whose judgment it might so largely have influenced. +Nor was this the only time in the poet's life that fairly earned honours +escaped him. + +-- +* See Forster's `Life of Dickens'. +-- + +`Colombe's Birthday' was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;* +and afterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit, +who created the principal part. It was again performed +for the Browning Society in 1885,** and although Miss Alma Murray, +as Colombe, was almost entirely supported by amateurs, +the result fully justified Miss Mary Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter) +in writing immediately afterwards in the Boston `Literary World':*** + +-- +* Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston. +** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning Society, + and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King, in January 1882. +*** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons' + `Introduction to the Study of Browning'. +-- + +== +`"Colombe's Birthday" is charming on the boards, clearer, +more direct in action, more full of delicate surprises +than one imagines it in print. With a very little cutting +it could be made an excellent acting play.' +== + +Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting, +and alludes in his `Personalia' to the greatly increased +knowledge of the stage which its minute directions displayed. +They told also of sad experience in the sacrifice of the poet +which the play-writer so often exacts: since they included the proviso +that unless a very good Valence could be found, a certain speech of his +should be left out. That speech is very important to the poetic, +and not less to the moral, purpose of the play: the triumph +of unworldly affections. It is that in which Valence defies the platitudes +so often launched against rank and power, and shows that these +may be very beautiful things -- in which he pleads for his rival, +and against his own heart. He is the better man of the two, and Colombe +has fallen genuinely in love with him. But the instincts of sovereignty +are not outgrown in one day however eventful, and the young duchess +has shown herself amply endowed with them. The Prince's offer promised much, +and it held still more. The time may come when she will need +that crowning memory of her husband's unselfishness and truth, +not to regret what she has done. + +`King Victor and King Charles' and `The Return of the Druses' are both +admitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage; +and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted +to witnessing the revival of `Strafford' or `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', +from neither of which the best amateur performance could remove +the stigma of past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friend +belonging to the Browning Society told him she had been seriously occupied +with the possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assented to the idea +with a simplicity that was almost touching, `It WAS written for the stage,' +he said, `and has only one scene.' He knew, however, that the single scene +was far from obviating all the difficulties of the case, and that the Society, +with its limited means, did the best it could. + +I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in `King Victor and King Charles' +which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, +revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, +while its occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, +the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that +in which Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for DUTY'S sake +to retain the crown, though he will earn, by so doing, +neither the credit of a virtuous deed nor the sure, persistent consciousness +of having performed one. + +Four poems of the `Dramatic Lyrics' had appeared, as I have said, +in the `Monthly Repository'. Six of those included in +the `Dramatic Lyrics and Romances' were first published in `Hood's Magazine' +from June 1844 to April 1845, a month before Hood's death. +These poems were, `The Laboratory', `Claret and Tokay', +`Garden Fancies', `The Boy and the Angel', `The Tomb at St. Praxed's', +and `The Flight of the Duchess'. Mr. Hood's health had given way +under stress of work, and Mr. Browning with other friends +thus came forward to help him. The fact deserves remembering +in connection with his subsequent unbroken rule never to write for magazines. +He might always have made exceptions for friendly or philanthropic objects; +the appearance of `Herve Riel' in the `Cornhill Magazine', 1870, +indeed proves that it was so. But the offer of a blank cheque +would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to this concession, +as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literary purpose. + +`In a Gondola' grew out of a single verse extemporized for a picture +by Maclise, in what circumstances we shall hear in the poet's own words. + +The first proof of `Artemis Prologuizes' had the following note: + +== +`I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained +of a tragedy I composed, much against my endeavour, while in bed with a fever +two years ago -- it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia; +but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once, +I soon forgot the remainder.'* + +-- +* When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for the `Handbook', + he spoke as if his illness had interrupted the work, + not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I think, the more striking. +-- +== + +Mr. Browning would have been very angry with himself if he had known +he ever wrote `I HAD better'; and the punctuation of this note, +as well as of every other unrevised specimen which we possess +of his early writing, helps to show by what careful study of the literary art +he must have acquired his subsequent mastery of it. + +`Cristina' was addressed in fancy to the Spanish queen. It is to be regretted +that the poem did not remain under its original heading of `Queen Worship': +as this gave a practical clue to the nature of the love described, +and the special remoteness of its object. + +`The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and another poem were written in May 1842 +for Mr. Macready's little eldest son, Willy, who was confined to the house +by illness, and who was to amuse himself by illustrating the poems +as well as reading them;* and the first of these, though not intended +for publication, was added to the `Dramatic Lyrics', because some columns +of that number of `Bells and Pomegranates' still required filling. +It is perhaps not known that the second was `Crescentius, the Pope's Legate': +now included in `Asolando'. + +-- +* Miss Browning has lately found some of the illustrations, + and the touching childish letter together with which + her brother received them. +-- + +Mr. Browning's father had himself begun a rhymed story on the subject +of `The Pied Piper'; but left it unfinished when he discovered +that his son was writing one. The fragment survives as part of a letter +addressed to Mr. Thomas Powell, and which I have referred to +as in the possession of Mr. Dykes Campbell. + +`The Lost Leader' has given rise to periodical questionings +continued until the present day, as to the person indicated in its title. +Mr. Browning answered or anticipated them fifteen years ago +in a letter to Miss Lee, of West Peckham, Maidstone. It was his reply +to an application in verse made to him in their very young days +by herself and two other members of her family, the manner of which +seems to have unusually pleased him. + +== + Villers-sur-mer, Calvados, France: September 7, '75. + +Dear Friends, -- Your letter has made a round to reach me -- +hence the delay in replying to it -- which you will therefore pardon. +I have been asked the question you put to me -- tho' never asked +so poetically and so pleasantly -- I suppose a score of times: +and I can only answer, with something of shame and contrition, +that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in my mind -- but simply as `a model'; +you know, an artist takes one or two striking traits +in the features of his `model', and uses them to start his fancy +on a flight which may end far enough from the good man or woman +who happens to be `sitting' for nose and eye. + +I thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism, +at an unlucky juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see. +But -- once call my fancy-portrait `Wordsworth' -- and how much more +ought one to say, -- how much more would not I have attempted to say! + +There is my apology, dear friends, and your acceptance of it will confirm me + Truly yours, + Robert Browning. +== + +Some fragments of correspondence, not all very interesting, +and his own allusion to an attack of illness, are our only record +of the poet's general life during the interval which separated +the publication of `Pippa Passes' from his second Italian journey. + +An undated letter to Miss Haworth probably refers to the close of 1841. + +== +`. . . I am getting to love painting as I did once. Do you know +I was a young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing? +My father had faith in me, and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies, +I well know, a certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil +and black currant jam-juice (paint being rank poison, as they said +when I sucked my brushes) with his (my father's) note in one corner, +"R. B., aetat. two years three months." "How fast, alas, our days we spend +-- How vain they be, how soon they end!" I am going to print "Victor", +however, by February, and there is one thing not so badly painted in there -- +oh, let me tell you. I chanced to call on Forster the other day, +and he pressed me into committing verse on the instant, not the minute, +in Maclise's behalf, who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, +for the British Institution. Forster described it well -- +but I could do nothing better, than this wooden ware -- +(all the "properties", as we say, were given, and the problem +was how to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason). + + I send my heart up to thee, all my heart + In this my singing! + For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; + The very night is clinging + Closer to Venice' streets to leave me space + Above me, whence thy face + May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place. + +Singing and stars and night and Venice streets and joyous heart, +are properties, do you please to see. And now tell me, +is this below the average of catalogue original poetry? +Tell me -- for to that end of being told, I write. . . . +I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch me calling people "dear" +in a hurry, except in letter-beginnings!) yesterday. +I don't know any people like them. There was a son of Burns there, +Major Burns whom Macready knows -- he sung "Of all the airts", +"John Anderson", and another song of his father's. . . .' +== + +In the course of 1842 he wrote the following note to Miss Flower, +evidently relating to the publication of her `Hymns and Anthems'. + +== + New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey: Tuesday morning. + +Dear Miss Flower, -- I am sorry for what must grieve Mr. Fox; +for myself, I beg him earnestly not to see me till his entire convenience, +however pleased I shall be to receive the letter you promise on his part. + +And how can I thank you enough for this good news -- all this music +I shall be so thoroughly gratified to hear? + Ever yours faithfully, + Robert Browning. +== + +His last letter to her was written in 1845; the subject being +a concert of her own sacred music which she was about to give; +and again, although more slightly, I anticipate the course of events, +in order to give it in its natural connection with the present one. +Mr. Browning was now engaged to be married, and the last ring +of youthful levity had disappeared from his tone; but neither +the new happiness nor the new responsibility had weakened his interest +in his boyhood's friend. Miss Flower must then have been slowly dying, +and the closing words of the letter have the solemnity of a last farewell. + +== + Sunday. + +Dear Miss Flower, -- I was very foolishly surprized at the sorrowful +finical notice you mention: foolishly; for, God help us, how else is it +with all critics of everything -- don't I hear them talk and see them write? +I dare-say he admires you as he said. + +For me, I never had another feeling than entire admiration for your music +-- entire admiration -- I put it apart from all other English music I know, +and fully believe in it as THE music we all waited for. + +Of your health I shall not trust myself to speak: you must know +what is unspoken. I should have been most happy to see you +if but for a minute -- and if next Wednesday, I might take your hand +for a moment. -- + +But you would concede that, if it were right, remembering what is now +very old friendship. + May God bless you for ever + (The signature has been cut off.) +== + +In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship, +it is believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance +of a young Neapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris; +and they became such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together. +Mr. Scotti was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged +their conveyance, and did all such bargaining in their joint interest +as the habits of his country required. `As I write,' Mr. Browning said +in a letter to his sister, `I hear him disputing our bill in the next room. +He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles +when we have used only two.' At Rome they spent most of their evenings +with an old acquaintance of Mr. Browning's, then Countess Carducci, +and she pronounced Mr. Scotti the handsomest man she had ever seen. +He certainly bore no appearance of being the least prosperous. +But he blew out his brains soon after he and his new friend had parted; +and I do not think the act was ever fully accounted for. + +It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went to Leghorn +to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter of introduction. +He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. Val Prinsep, +but chiefly in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr. Trelawney +had displayed during its course. A surgeon was occupied all the time +in probing his leg for a bullet which had been lodged there some years before, +and had lately made itself felt; and he showed himself absolutely indifferent +to the pain of the operation. Mr. Browning's main object in paying the visit +had been, naturally, to speak with one who had known Byron +and been the last to see Shelley alive; but we only hear of the two poets +that they formed in part the subject of their conversation. +He reached England, again, we suppose, through Germany -- +since he avoided Paris as before. + +It has been asserted by persons otherwise well informed, that on this, +if not on his previous Italian journey, Mr. Browning became acquainted +with Stendhal, then French Consul at Civita Vecchia, and that he imbibed +from the great novelist a taste for curiosities of Italian family history, +which ultimately led him in the direction of the Franceschini case. +It is certain that he profoundly admired this writer, +and if he was not, at some time or other, introduced to him +it was because the opportunity did not occur. But there is abundant evidence +that no introduction took place, and quite sufficient proof +that none was possible. Stendhal died in Paris in March 1842; +and granting that he was at Civita Vecchia when the poet made +his earlier voyage -- no certainty even while he held the appointment -- +the ship cannot have touched there on its way to Trieste. +It is also a mistake to suppose that Mr. Browning was specially interested +in ancient chronicles, as such. This was one of the points on which +he distinctly differed from his father. He took his dramatic subjects +wherever he found them, and any historical research which +they ultimately involved was undertaken for purposes of verification. +`Sordello' alone may have been conceived on a rather different plan, +and I have no authority whatever for admitting that it was so. +The discovery of the record of the Franceschini case was, +as its author has everywhere declared, an accident. + +A single relic exists for us of this visit to the South -- +a shell picked up, according to its inscription, on one of the Syren Isles, +October 4, 1844; but many of its reminiscences are embodied +in that vivid and charming picture `The Englishman in Italy', +which appeared in the `Bells and Pomegranates' number for the following year. +Naples always remained a bright spot in the poet's memory; +and if it had been, like Asolo, his first experience of Italy, +it must have drawn him in later years the more powerfully of the two. +At one period, indeed, he dreamed of it as a home for his declining days. + + + + +Chapter 9 + +1844-1849 + + Introduction to Miss Barrett -- Engagement -- Motives for Secrecy -- + Marriage -- Journey to Italy -- Extract of Letter from Mr. Fox -- + Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford -- Life at Pisa -- + Vallombrosa -- Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle -- + Proposed British Mission to the Vatican -- Father Prout -- Palazzo Guidi -- + Fano; Ancona -- `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. + + + +During his recent intercourse with the Browning family +Mr. Kenyon had often spoken of his invalid cousin, Elizabeth Barrett,* +and had given them copies of her works; and when the poet returned to England, +late in 1844, he saw the volume containing `Lady Geraldine's Courtship', +which had appeared during his absence. On hearing him express +his admiration of it, Mr. Kenyon begged him to write to Miss Barrett, +and himself tell her how the poems had impressed him; +`for,' he added, `my cousin is a great invalid, and sees no one, +but great souls jump at sympathy.' Mr. Browning did write, +and, a few months, probably, after the correspondence had been established, +begged to be allowed to visit her. She at first refused this, +on the score of her delicate health and habitual seclusion, +emphasizing the refusal by words of such touching humility and resignation +that I cannot refrain from quoting them. `There is nothing to see in me, +nothing to hear in me. I am a weed fit for the ground and darkness.' +But her objections were overcome, and their first interview +sealed Mr. Browning's fate. + +-- +* Properly E. Barrett Moulton-Barrett. The first of these surnames + was that originally borne by the family, but dropped on the annexation + of the second. It has now for some years been resumed. +-- + +There is no cause for surprize in the passionate admiration with which +Miss Barrett so instantly inspired him. To begin with, he was heart-whole. +It would be too much to affirm that, in the course of his thirty-two years, +he had never met with a woman whom he could entirely love; +but if he had, it was not under circumstances which favoured +the growth of such a feeling. She whom he now saw for the first time +had long been to him one of the greatest of living poets; she was learned +as women seldom were in those days. It must have been apparent, +in the most fugitive contact, that her moral nature was as exquisite +as her mind was exceptional. She looked much younger than her age, +which he only recently knew to have been six years beyond his own; +and her face was filled with beauty by the large, expressive eyes. +The imprisoned love within her must unconsciously have leapt to meet his own. +It would have been only natural that he should grow into the determination +to devote his life to hers, or be swept into an offer of marriage +by a sudden impulse which his after-judgment would condemn. +Neither of these things occurred. The offer was indeed made +under a sudden and overmastering impulse. But it was persistently repeated, +till it had obtained a conditional assent. No sane man +in Mr. Browning's position could have been ignorant of the responsibilities +he was incurring. He had, it is true, no experience of illness. +Of its nature, its treatment, its symptoms direct and indirect, +he remained pathetically ignorant to his dying day. He did not know +what disqualifications for active existence might reside in the fragile, +recumbent form, nor in the long years lived without change of air or scene +beyond the passage, not always even allowed, from bed-room to sitting-room, +from sofa to bed again. But he did know that Miss Barrett +received him lying down, and that his very ignorance of her condition +left him without security for her ever being able to stand. +A strong sense of sympathy and pity could alone entirely justify or explain +his act -- a strong desire to bring sunshine into that darkened life. +We might be sure that these motives had been present with him +if we had no direct authority for believing it; and we have this authority +in his own comparatively recent words: `She had so much need +of care and protection. There was so much pity in what I felt for her!' +The pity was, it need hardly be said, at no time a substitute for love, +though the love in its full force only developed itself later; +but it supplied an additional incentive. + +Miss Barrett had made her acceptance of Mr. Browning's proposal +contingent on her improving in health. The outlook was therefore vague. +But under the influence of this great new happiness she did gain +some degree of strength. They saw each other three times a week; +they exchanged letters constantly, and a very deep and perfect understanding +established itself between them. Mr. Browning never mentioned his visits +except to his own family, because it was naturally feared +that if Miss Barrett were known to receive one person, other friends, +or even acquaintances, would claim admittance to her; and Mr. Kenyon, +who was greatly pleased by the result of his introduction, +kept silence for the same reason. + +In this way the months slipped by till the summer of 1846 +was drawing to its close, and Miss Barrett's doctor then announced +that her only chance of even comparative recovery lay +in spending the coming winter in the South. There was no rational obstacle +to her acting on this advice, since more than one of her brothers +was willing to escort her; but Mr. Barrett, while surrounding his daughter +with every possible comfort, had resigned himself to her invalid condition +and expected her also to acquiesce in it. He probably did not believe +that she would benefit by the proposed change. At any rate +he refused his consent to it. There remained to her only one alternative -- +to break with the old home and travel southwards as Mr. Browning's wife. + +When she had finally assented to this course, she took a preparatory step +which, in so far as it was known, must itself have been sufficiently startling +to those about her: she drove to Regent's Park, and when there, +stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I do not know +how long she stood -- probably only for a moment; but I well remember hearing +that when, after so long an interval, she felt earth under her feet +and air about her, the sensation was almost bewilderingly strange. + +They were married, with strict privacy, on September 12, 1846, +at St. Pancras Church. + +The engaged pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett's +sanction to their marriage; they had not even invoked it; +and the doubly clandestine character thus forced upon the union +could not be otherwise than repugnant to Mr. Browning's pride; +but it was dictated by the deepest filial affection on the part +of his intended wife. There could be no question in so enlightened a mind +of sacrificing her own happiness with that of the man she loved; +she was determined to give herself to him. But she knew that her father +would never consent to her doing so; and she preferred marrying +without his knowledge to acting in defiance of a prohibition which, +once issued, he would never have revoked, and which would have weighed +like a portent of evil upon her. She even kept the secret of her engagement +from her intimate friend Miss Mitford, and her second father, Mr. Kenyon, +that they might not be involved in its responsibility. And Mr. Kenyon, +who, probably of all her circle, best understood the case, +was grateful to her for this consideration. + +Mr. Barrett was one of those men who will not part with their children; +who will do anything for them except allow them to leave the parental home. +We have all known fathers of this type. He had nothing to urge +against Robert Browning. When Mr. Kenyon, later, said to him +that he could not understand his hostility to the marriage, +since there was no man in the world to whom he would more gladly +have given his daughter if he had been so fortunate as to possess one,* +he replied: `I have no objection to the young man, +but my daughter should have been thinking of another world;' +and, given his conviction that Miss Barrett's state was hopeless, +some allowance must be made for the angered sense of fitness +which her elopement was calculated to arouse in him. +But his attitude was the same, under the varying circumstances, +with all his daughters and sons alike. There was no possible husband or wife +whom he would cordially have accepted for one of them. + +-- +* Mr. Kenyon had been twice married, but he had no children. +-- + +Mr. Browning had been willing, even at that somewhat late age, +to study for the Bar, or accept, if he could obtain it, +any other employment which might render him less ineligible +from a pecuniary point of view. But Miss Barrett refused to hear +of such a course; and the subsequent necessity for her leaving England +would have rendered it useless. + +For some days after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Browning returned +to their old life. He justly thought that the agitation of the ceremony +had been, for the moment, as much as she could endure, +and had therefore fixed for it a day prior by one week to that +of their intended departure from England. The only difference in their habits +was that he did not see her; he recoiled from the hypocrisy +of asking for her under her maiden name; and during this passive interval, +fortunately short, he carried a weight of anxiety and of depression +which placed it among the most painful periods of his existence. + +In the late afternoon or evening of September 19, Mrs. Browning, +attended by her maid and her dog, stole away from her father's house. +The family were at dinner, at which meal she was not in the habit +of joining them; her sisters Henrietta and Arabel had been throughout +in the secret of her attachment and in full sympathy with it; +in the case of the servants, she was also sure of friendly connivance. +There was no difficulty in her escape, but that created by the dog, +which might be expected to bark its consciousness of the unusual situation. +She took him into her confidence. She said: `O Flush, if you make a sound, +I am lost.' And Flush understood, as what good dog would not? -- +and crept after his mistress in silence. I do not remember where her husband +joined her; we may be sure it was as near her home as possible. +That night they took the boat to Havre, on their way to Paris. + +Only a short time elapsed before Mr. Barrett became aware +of what had happened. It is not necessary to dwell on his indignation, +which at that moment, I believe, was shared by all his sons. +Nor were they the only persons to be agitated by the occurrence. +If there was wrath in the Barrett family, there was consternation +in that of Mr. Browning. He had committed a crime +in the eyes of his wife's father; but he had been guilty, +in the judgment of his own parents, of one of those errors which are worse. +A hundred times the possible advantages of marrying a Miss Barrett +could never have balanced for them the risks and dangers he had incurred +in wresting to himself the guardianship of that frail life which might perish +in his hands, leaving him to be accused of having destroyed it; +and they must have awaited the event with feelings never to be forgotten. + +It was soon to be apparent that in breaking the chains +which bound her to a sick room, Mr. Browning had not killed his wife, +but was giving her a new lease of existence. His parents and sister +soon loved her dearly, for her own sake as well as her husband's; +and those who, if in a mistaken manner, had hitherto cherished her, +gradually learned, with one exception, to value him for hers. It would, +however, be useless to deny that the marriage was a hazardous experiment, +involving risks of suffering quite other than those connected +with Mrs. Browning's safety: the latent practical disparities +of an essentially vigorous and an essentially fragile existence; +and the time came when these were to make themselves felt. +Mrs. Browning had been a delicate infant. She had also outgrown this delicacy +and developed into a merry, and, in the harmless sense, mischief-loving child. +The accident which subsequently undermined her life could only have befallen +a very active and healthy girl.* Her condition justified hope and, +to a great extent, fulfilled it. She rallied surprisingly and almost suddenly +in the sunshine of her new life, and remained for several years +at the higher physical level: her natural and now revived spirits sometimes, +I imagine, lifting her beyond it. But her ailments were too radical for +permanent cure, as the weak voice and shrunken form never ceased to attest. +They renewed themselves, though in slightly different conditions; +and she gradually relapsed, during the winters at least, +into something like the home-bound condition of her earlier days. +It became impossible that she should share the more active side +of her husband's existence. It had to be alternately suppressed +and carried on without her. The deep heart-love, the many-sided +intellectual sympathy, preserved their union in rare beauty to the end. +But to say that it thus maintained itself as if by magic, +without effort of self-sacrifice on his part or of resignation on hers, +would be as unjust to the noble qualities of both, as it would be false +to assert that its compensating happiness had ever failed them. + +-- +* Her family at that time lived in the country. She was a constant rider, + and fond of saddling her pony; and one day, when she was about fourteen, + she overbalanced herself in lifting the saddle, and fell backward, + inflicting injuries on her head, or rather spine, + which caused her great suffering, but of which the nature + remained for some time undiscovered. +-- + +Mr. Browning's troubles did not, even for the present, exhaust themselves +in that week of apprehension. They assumed a deeper reality +when his delicate wife first gave herself into his keeping, +and the long hours on steamboat and in diligence were before them. +What she suffered in body, and he in mind, during the first days +of that wedding-journey is better imagined than told. +In Paris they either met, or were joined by, a friend, Mrs. Anna Jameson +(then also en route for Italy), and Mrs. Browning was doubly cared for +till she and her husband could once more put themselves on their way. +At Genoa came the long-needed rest in southern land. From thence, +in a few days, they went on to Pisa, and settled there for the winter. + +Even so great a friend as John Forster was not in the secret +of Mr. Browning's marriage; we learn this through an amusing paragraph +in a letter from Mr. Fox, written soon after it had taken place: + +== +`Forster never heard of the Browning marriage till the proof +of the newspaper (`Examiner') notice was sent; when he went into +one of his great passions at the supposed hoax, ordered up the compositor +to have a swear at him, and demanded to see the MS. from which it was taken: +so it was brought, and he instantly recognised the hand of Browning's sister. +Next day came a letter from R. B., saying he had often meant to tell him +or write of it, but hesitated between the two, and neglected both. + +`She was better, and a winter in Italy had been recommended some months ago. + +`It seems as if made up by their poetry rather than themselves.' +== + +Many interesting external details of Mr. Browning's married life +must have been lost to us through the wholesale destruction of his letters +to his family, of which mention has been already made, +and which he carried out before leaving Warwick Crescent about four years ago; +and Mrs. Browning's part in the correspondence, though still preserved, +cannot fill the gap, since for a long time it chiefly consisted +of little personal outpourings, inclosed in her husband's letters +and supplementary to them. But she also wrote constantly to Miss Mitford; +and, from the letters addressed to her, now fortunately +in Mr. Barrett Browning's hands, it has been possible to extract many passages +of a sufficiently great, and not too private, interest for our purpose. +These extracts -- in some cases almost entire letters -- indeed constitute +a fairly complete record of Mr. and Mrs. Browning's joint life +till the summer of 1854, when Miss Mitford's death was drawing near, +and the correspondence ceased. Their chronological order +is not always certain, because Mrs. Browning never gave the year in which +her letters were written, and in some cases the postmark is obliterated; +but the missing date can almost always be gathered from their contents. +The first letter is probably written from Paris. + +== + Oct. 2 ('46). + +`. . . and he, as you say, had done everything for me -- +he loved me for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself -- +loved me heart to heart persistently -- in spite of my own will. . . . +drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both. +My life seemed to belong to him and to none other, at last, +and I had no power to speak a word. Have faith in me, my dearest friend, +till you know him. The intellect is so little in comparison to all the rest +-- to the womanly tenderness, the inexhaustible goodness, +the high and noble aspiration of every hour. Temper, spirits, manners -- +there is not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes sometimes +and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel. Only, if it had been a dream, +the pain of some parts of it would have wakened me before now -- +it is not a dream. . . .' +== + +The three next speak for themselves. + +== + Pisa: ('46). + +`. . . For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full +of beauty and repose, -- and the purple mountains gloriously seem +to beckon us on deeper into the vine land. We have rooms close to the Duomo, +and leaning down on the great Collegio built by Facini. +Three excellent bed-rooms and a sitting-room matted and carpeted, +looking comfortable even for England. For the last fortnight, +except the last few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate +is as mild as possible, no cold with all the damp. Delightful weather +we had for the travelling. Mrs. Jameson says she won't call me improved +but transformed rather. . . . I mean to know something about pictures +some day. Robert does, and I shall get him to open my eyes for me +with a little instruction -- in this place are to be seen +the first steps of Art. . . .' +== + +== + Pisa: Dec. 19 ('46). + +`. . . Within these three or four days we have had frost -- yes, +and a little snow -- for the first time, say the Pisans, within five years. +Robert says the mountains are powdered towards Lucca. . . .' +== + +== + Feb. 3 ('47). + +`. . . Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of his books, +but certainly he does not in a general way appreciate our French people +quite with my warmth. He takes too high a standard, I tell him, +and won't listen to a story for a story's sake -- I can bear, +you know, to be amused without a strong pull on my admiration. +So we have great wars sometimes -- I put up Dumas' flag or Soulie's +or Eugene Sue's (yet he was properly impressed by the `Mysteres de Paris'), +and carry it till my arms ache. The plays and vaudevilles he knows +far more of than I do, and always maintains they are the happiest growth +of the French school. Setting aside the `masters', observe; +for Balzac and George Sand hold all their honours. Then we read together +the other day `Rouge et Noir', that powerful work of Stendhal's, +and he observed that it was exactly like Balzac `in the raw' -- +in the material and undeveloped conception . . . We leave Pisa in April, +and pass through Florence towards the north of Italy . . .' + +(She writes out a long list of the `Comedie Humaine' for Miss Mitford.) +== + +Mr. and Mrs. Browning must have remained in Florence, +instead of merely passing through it; this is proved +by the contents of the two following letters: + +== + Aug. 20 ('47). + +`. . . We have spent one of the most delightful of summers +notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the possibility +of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot certainly +it has been and is, yet there have been cool intermissions, +and as we have spacious and airy rooms, as Robert lets me sit all day +in my white dressing-gown without a single masculine criticism, +and as we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony terrace +which is quite private, and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, +and as we live upon water-melons and iced water and figs +and all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience. + +We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them +for two months, but the new abbot said or implied that Wilson and I +stank in his nostrils, being women. So we were sent away +at the end of five days. So provoking! Such scenery, such hills, +such a sea of hills looking alive among the clouds -- which rolled, +it was difficult to discern. Such fine woods, supernaturally silent, +with the ground black as ink. There were eagles there too, +and there was no road. Robert went on horseback, and Wilson and I +were drawn on a sledge -- (i.e. an old hamper, a basket wine-hamper -- +without a wheel) by two white bullocks, up the precipitous mountains. +Think of my travelling in those wild places at four o'clock in the morning! +a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration. +It was a sight to see before one died and went away into another world. +But being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days, +we had to come back to Florence to find a new apartment cooler than the old, +and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon, and dear Mr. Kenyon does not come after all. +And on the 20th of September we take up our knapsacks and turn our faces +towards Rome, creeping slowly along, with a pause at Arezzo, +and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni. +Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian rock, +and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. +This Florence is unspeakably beautiful . . .' +== + +== + Oct. ('47). + +`. . . Very few acquaintances have we made in Florence, +and very quietly lived out our days. Mr. Powers, the sculptor, +is our chief friend and favourite. A most charming, simple, straightforward, +genial American -- as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself to be. +He sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much. +The sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light -- +you would scarcely marvel if they clove the marble without +the help of his hands. We have seen, besides, the Hoppners, +Lord Byron's friends at Venice; and Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, +an authoress and poetess on her own account, having been introduced to Robert +in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out, and paid us a visit. +A very vivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough . . .' +== + +In this year, 1847, the question arose of a British mission to the Vatican; +and Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Monckton Milnes begging him +to signify to the Foreign Office his more than willingness to take part in it. +He would be glad and proud, he said, to be secretary to such an embassy, +and to work like a horse in his vocation. The letter is given +in the lately published biography of Lord Houghton, and I am obliged +to confess that it has been my first intimation of the fact recorded there. +When once his `Paracelsus' had appeared, and Mr. Browning +had taken rank as a poet, he renounced all idea of more active work; +and the tone and habits of his early married life would have seemed +scarcely consistent with a renewed impulse towards it. +But the fact was in some sense due to the very circumstances of that life: +among them, his wife's probable incitement to, and certain sympathy with, +the proceeding. + +The projected winter in Rome had been given up, I believe against +the doctor's advice, on the strength of the greater attractions of Florence. +Our next extract is dated from thence, Dec. 8, 1847. + +== +`. . . Think what we have done since I last wrote to you. Taken two houses, +that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract. +You will set it down to excellent poet's work in the way of domestic economy, +but the fault was altogether mine, as usual. My husband, to please me, +took rooms which I could not be pleased with three days +through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequence was that +we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go away ourselves -- +any alternative being preferable to a return of illness -- +and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. +You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. +So away we came into the blaze of him in the Piazza Pitti; +precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace; I with my remorse, +and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, +a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little +for the mere relief of the thing -- but as to HIS being angry with ME +for any cause except not eating enough dinner, the said sun +would turn the wrong way first. So here we are in the Pitti till April, +in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning till evening, +and most days I am able to get out into the piazza and walk up and down +for twenty minutes without feeling a breath of the actual winter . . . +and Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, +to catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire -- +and a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and accomplishment +never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing she is too, and original; +and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make between them. +And this is nearly all we see of the Face Divine -- I can't make Robert go out +a single evening. . . .' +== + +We have five extracts for 1848. One of these, not otherwise dated, +describes an attack of sore-throat which was fortunately Mr. Browning's last; +and the letter containing it must have been written +in the course of the summer. + +== +`. . . My husband was laid up for nearly a month with fever +and relaxed sore-throat. Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands +and languid eyes -- the only unhappiness I ever had by him. +And then he wouldn't see a physician, and if it had not been +that just at the right moment Mr. Mahoney, the celebrated Jesuit, +and "Father Prout" of Fraser, knowing everything as those Jesuits +are apt to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out to us +that the fever got ahead through weakness, and mixed up with his own kind hand +a potion of eggs and port wine; to the horror of our Italian servant, +who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for fever, +crying, "O Inglesi! Inglesi!" the case would have been far worse, +I have no kind of doubt, for the eccentric prescription +gave the power of sleeping, and the pulse grew quieter directly. +I shall always be grateful to Father Prout -- always.'* + +-- +* It had not been merely a case of relaxed sore-throat. + There was an abscess, which burst during this first night of sleep. +-- +== + +== + May 28. + +`. . . And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last, +little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was, to get to England +as much in summer as possible, the expense of the intermediate journeys +making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case, +it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our way +of taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment and furnish it +would leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of the first year +in exchange for our outlay, and all but a free residence afterwards, +the cheapness of furniture being quite fabulous at the present crisis. . . . +In fact we have really done it magnificently, and planted ourselves +in the Guidi Palace in the favourite suite of the last Count +(his arms are in scagliola on the floor of my bedroom). +Though we have six beautiful rooms and a kitchen, three of them +quite palace rooms and opening on a terrace, and though such furniture +as comes by slow degrees into them is antique and worthy of the place, +we yet shall have saved money by the end of this year. . . . +Now I tell you all this lest you should hear dreadful rumours +of our having forsaken our native land, venerable institutions and all, +whereas we remember it so well (it's a dear land in many senses), +that we have done this thing chiefly in order to make sure +of getting back comfortably, . . . a stone's throw, too, +it is from the Pitti, and really in my present mind +I would hardly exchange with the Grand Duke himself. +By the bye, as to street, we have no spectators in windows +in just the grey wall of a church called San Felice for good omen. + +`Now, have you heard enough of us? What I claimed first, in way of privilege, +was a spring-sofa to loll upon, and a supply of rain water to wash in, +and you shall see what a picturesque oil-jar they have given us +for the latter purpose; it would just hold the Captain of the Forty Thieves. +As for the chairs and tables, I yield the more especial interest in them +to Robert; only you would laugh to hear us correct one another sometimes. +"Dear, you get too many drawers, and not enough washing-stands. +Pray don't let us have any more drawers when we've nothing more +to put in them." There was no division on the necessity of having six spoons +-- some questions passed themselves. . . .' +== + +== + July. + +`. . . I am quite well again and strong. Robert and I go out often after tea +in a wandering walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, +or, better still, at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold +under the bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, +we are happier than ever. . . .' +== + +== + Aug. + +`. . . As for ourselves we have hardly done so well -- yet well -- +having enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, +sent us to Fano as "a delightful summer residence for an English family," +and we found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched +into paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks +of the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words +that no drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. +A "circulating library" which "does not give out books," +and "a refined and intellectual Italian society" (I quote Murray +for that phrase) which "never reads a book through" (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, +Dr. Wiseman's mother, who has lived in Fano seven years) +complete the advantages of the place. Yet the churches are very beautiful, +and a divine picture of Guercino's is worth going all that way to see. . . . +We fled from Fano after three days, and finding ourselves +cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it +what the Italians call "un bel giro". So we went to Ancona -- +a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, +and elbowing out the purple tides -- beautiful to look upon. +An exfoliation of the rock itself you would call the houses +that seem to grow there -- so identical is the colour and character. +I should like to visit Ancona again when there is a little air and shadow. +We stayed a week, as it was, living upon fish and cold water. . . .' +== + +The one dated Florence, December 16, is interesting with reference to +Mr. Browning's attitude when he wrote the letters to Mr. Frank Hill +which I have recently quoted. + +== +`We have been, at least I have been, a little anxious lately +about the fate of the `Blot in the 'Scutcheon' which Mr. Phelps +applied for my husband's permission to revive at Sadler's. +Of course putting the request was mere form, as he had every right +to act the play -- only it made ME anxious till we heard the result -- +and we both of us are very grateful to dear Mr. Chorley, +who not only made it his business to be at the theatre the first night, +but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend to give us +the story of the result, and never, he says, was a more legitimate success. +The play went straight to the hearts of the audience, it seems, +and we hear of its continuance on the stage, from the papers. +You may remember, or may not have heard, how Macready brought it out +and put his foot on it, in the flush of a quarrel between manager and author; +and Phelps, knowing the whole secret and feeling the power of the play, +determined on making a revival of it in his own theatre. +Mr. Chorley called his acting "fine". . . .' +== + + + + +Chapter 10 + +1849-1852 + + Death of Mr. Browning's Mother -- Birth of his Son -- + Mrs. Browning's Letters continued -- Baths of Lucca -- Florence again -- + Venice -- Margaret Fuller Ossoli -- Visit to England -- Winter in Paris -- + Carlyle -- George Sand -- Alfred de Musset. + + + +On March 9, 1849, Mr. Browning's son was born. With the joy +of his wife's deliverance from the dangers of such an event +came also his first great sorrow. His mother did not live +to receive the news of her grandchild's birth. The letter which conveyed it +found her still breathing, but in the unconsciousness of approaching death. +There had been no time for warning. The sister could only break +the suddenness of the shock. A letter of Mrs. Browning's +tells what was to be told. + +== + Florence: April 30 ('49). + +`. . . This is the first packet of letters, except one to Wimpole Street, +which I have written since my confinement. You will have heard how +our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband's mother. +An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart) terminated in a fatal way +-- and she lay in the insensibility precursive of the grave's +when the letter written with such gladness by my poor husband +and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address. +"It would have made her heart bound," said her daughter to us. +Poor tender heart -- the last throb was too near. The medical men +would not allow the news to be communicated. The next joy she felt +was to be in heaven itself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, +and indeed, except for the courageous consideration of his sister +who wrote two letters of preparation, saying "She was not well" +and she "was very ill" when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think +what the result would have been to him. He has loved his mother +as such passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down +in an extremity of sorrow -- never. Even now, the depression is great -- +and sometimes when I leave him alone a little and return to the room, +I find him in tears. I do earnestly wish to change the scene and air -- +but where to go? England looks terrible now. He says +it would break his heart to see his mother's roses over the wall +and the place where she used to lay her scissors and gloves -- +which I understand so thoroughly that I can't say "Let us go to England." +We must wait and see what his father and sister will choose to do, +or choose us to do -- for of course a duty plainly seen +would draw us anywhere. My own dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed +by any change of plan -- only they are too good and kind not to understand +the difficulty -- not to see the motive. So do you, I am certain. +It has been very, very painful altogether, this drawing together +of life and death. Robert was too enraptured at my safety +and with his little son, and the sudden reaction was terrible. . . .' +== + +== + Bagni di Lucca. + +`. . . We have been wandering in search of cool air and a cool bough +among all the olive trees to build our summer nest on. +My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to, +in consequence of the great mental shock of last March -- +loss of appetite, loss of sleep -- looks quite worn and altered. +His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter +from New Cross threw him back into deep depression. I was very anxious, +and feared much that the end of it all would be (the intense heat +of Florence assisting) nervous fever or something similar; +and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence +for a month or two. He who generally delights in travelling, +had no mind for change or movement. I had to say and swear +that Baby and I couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would go away. +"Ce que femme veut, HOMME veut," if the latter is at all amiable, +or the former persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreed +that we two should go on an exploring journey, to find out where we could have +most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his nurse and Wilson, +while we were absent. We went along the coast to Spezzia, +saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through +the olive-forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, +chestnut woods, glorious surprises of the most exquisite scenery. +I say olive-forests advisedly -- the olive grows like a forest-tree +in those regions, shading the ground with tints of silvery network. +The olive near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, +and I have learnt to despise a little too the Florentine vine, +which does not swing such portcullises of massive dewy green +from one tree to another as along the whole road where we travelled. +Beautiful indeed it was. Spezzia wheels the blue sea +into the arms of the wooded mountains; and we had a glance +at Shelley's house at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of course. +I was not sorry that the lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. +We returned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), +saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains, where rock river and wood +enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants drove us off +by their unreasonable prices. It is curious -- but just in proportion +to the want of civilization the prices rise in Italy. +If you haven't cups and saucers, you are made to pay for plate. +Well -- so finding no rest for the soles of our feet, +I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. +We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello, or some safer wilderness. +We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice +against the Baths of Lucca; taking them for a sort of wasp's nest +of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat +by the continental English -- yet, I wanted to see the place, +because it is a place to see, after all. So we came, and were so charmed +by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the coolness of the climate, +and the absence of our countrymen -- political troubles serving admirably +our private requirements, that we made an offer for rooms on the spot, +and returned to Florence for Baby and the rest of our establishment +without further delay. Here we are then. We have been here +more than a fortnight. We have taken an apartment for the season -- +four months, paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able +to stay till the end of October. The living is cheaper than even in Florence, +so that there has been no extravagance in coming here. +In fact Florence is scarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat +by day and night, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. +We have taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place -- the highest house +of the highest of the three villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, +and which lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually +by a rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicale +is all the noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage-wheels cannot vex us, +God be thanked for it! The silence is full of joy and consolation. +I think my husband's spirits are better already, and his appetite improved. +Certainly little Babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. +He is out all day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it +that he is prettier than the whole population of babies here. . . . +Then my whole strength has wonderfully improved -- just as +my medical friends prophesied, -- and it seems like a dream +when I find myself able to climb the hills with Robert, +and help him to lose himself in the forests. Ever since my confinement +I have been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop +I can't tell really. I can do as much or more than at any point of my life +since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of the place +seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: it draws you, +raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness -- +sheathed in Italian sunshine -- think what that must be! +And the beauty and the solitude -- for with a few paces +we get free of the habitations of men -- all is delightful to me. +What is peculiarly beautiful and wonderful, is the variety of the shapes +of the mountains. They are a multitude -- and yet there is no likeness. +None, except where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. +For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest +is not like that bare peak which tilts against the sky -- +nor like the serpent-twine of another which seems to move and coil +in the moving coiling shadow. . . .' +== + +She writes again: + +== + Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49). + +`. . . I have performed a great exploit -- ridden on a donkey five miles deep +into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far +from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with Baby) +on other donkies, -- guides of course. We set off at eight in the morning, +and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle, +I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour +for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains +could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, +one could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed +of exhausted torrents -- above and through the chestnut forests +precipitous beyond what you would think possible for ascent or descent. +Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, +sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly, as we looked round +on the world of innumerable mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea -- +and not a human habitation. . . .' +== + +The following fragment, which I have received quite without date, +might refer to this or to a somewhat later period. + +== +`If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved health, +and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people, +of how your wife walked here with you, and there with you, +as if a wife with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature."' +== + +== + Florence: Feb. 18 ('50). + +`. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live, +and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here. +Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .' +== + +== + Florence: April 1 ('50). + +`. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, +just sweeping through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello +looked out to see the Duke go by -- and just such a door +where Tasso stood and where Dante drew his chair out to sit. +Strange to have all that old world life about us, and the blue sky +so bright. . . .' +== + +== + Venice: June 4 (probably '50). + +`. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice. +The Heaven of it is ineffable -- never had I touched the skirts +of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, +the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, +the enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas -- I mix it all up together +and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, +not a second Venice in the world. + +`Do you know when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. +But now comes the earth-side. + +`Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable and nervous, +unable to eat or sleep, and poor Wilson still worse, in a miserable condition +of sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices, +so exquisite and so bilious. Therefore I am constrained away from my joys +by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going away on Friday. +For myself, it did not affect me at all. Take the mild, soft, +relaxing climate -- even the scirocco does not touch me. +And the baby grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything. . . . +As for Venice, you can't get even a "Times", much less an "Athenaeum". +We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (a whole box +on the grand tier, mind) for two shillings and eightpence, English. Also, +every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon +in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking excellent coffee +and reading the French papers.' +== + +If it were possible to draw more largely on Mrs. Browning's correspondence +for this year, it would certainly supply the record of her intimacy, +and that of her husband, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli. A warm attachment +sprang up between them during that lady's residence in Florence. +Its last evenings were all spent at their house; and, soon after +she had bidden them farewell, she availed herself of a two days' delay +in the departure of the ship to return from Leghorn and be with them +one evening more. She had what seemed a prophetic dread +of the voyage to America, though she attached no superstitious importance +to the prediction once made to her husband that he would be drowned; +and learned when it was too late to change her plans that her presence there +was, after all, unnecessary. Mr. Browning was deeply affected +by the news of her death by shipwreck, which took place on July 16, 1850; +and wrote an account of his acquaintance with her, for publication +by her friends. This also, unfortunately, was lost. +Her son was of the same age as his, little more than a year old; +but she left a token of the friendship which might some day have united them, +in a small Bible inscribed to the baby Robert, `In memory of Angelo Ossoli.' + +The intended journey to England was delayed for Mr. Browning +by the painful associations connected with his mother's death; +but in the summer of 1851 he found courage to go there: +and then, as on each succeeding visit paid to London with his wife, +he commemorated his marriage in a manner all his own. He went to the church +in which it had been solemnized, and kissed the paving-stones +in front of the door. It needed all this love to comfort Mrs. Browning +in the estrangement from her father which was henceforth to be accepted +as final. He had held no communication with her since her marriage, +and she knew that it was not forgiven; but she had cherished a hope +that he would so far relent towards her as to kiss her child, +even if he would not see her. Her prayer to this effect remained, +however, unanswered. + +In the autumn they proceeded to Paris; whence Mrs. Browning wrote, +October 22 and November 12. + +== + 138, Avenue des Champs Elysees. + +`. . . It was a long time before we could settle ourselves +in a private apartment. . . . At last we came off to these Champs Elysees, +to a very pleasant apartment, the window looking over a large terrace +(almost large enough to serve the purpose of a garden) to the great drive +and promenade of the Parisians when they come out of the streets +to sun and shade and show themselves off among the trees. +A pretty little dining-room, a writing and dressing-room for Robert beside it, +a drawing-room beyond that, with two excellent bedrooms, +and third bedroom for a "femme de menage", kitchen, &c. . . . +So this answers all requirements, and the sun suns us loyally as in duty bound +considering the southern aspect, and we are glad to find ourselves +settled for six months. We have had lovely weather, and have seen a fire +only yesterday for the first time since we left England. . . . +We have seen nothing in Paris, except the shell of it. Yet, two evenings ago +we hazarded going to a reception at Lady Elgin's, in the Faubourg St. Germain, +and saw some French, but nobody of distinction. + +`It is a good house, I believe, and she has an earnest face +which must mean something. We were invited to go every Monday +between eight and twelve. We go on Friday to Madame Mohl's, +where we are to have some of the "celebrites". . . . +Carlyle, for instance, I liked infinitely more in his personality +than I expected to like him, and I saw a great deal of him, +for he travelled with us to Paris, and spent several evenings with us, +we three together. He is one of the most interesting men I could imagine, +even deeply interesting to me; and you come to understand perfectly +when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, +and his scorn, sensibility. Highly picturesque, too, he is in conversation; +the talk of writing men is very seldom so good. + +`And, do you know, I was much taken, in London, with a young authoress, +Geraldine Jewsbury. You have read her books. . . . She herself +is quiet and simple, and drew my heart out of me a good deal. +I felt inclined to love her in our half-hour's intercourse. . . .' +== + +== + 138, Avenue des Champs Elysees: (Nov. 12). + +`. . . Robert's father and sister have been paying us a visit +during the last three weeks. They are very affectionate to me, +and I love them for his sake and their own, and am very sorry +at the thought of losing them, as we are on the point of doing. +We hope, however, to establish them in Paris, if we can stay, +and if no other obstacle should arise before the spring, +when they must leave Hatcham. Little Wiedemann `draws', +as you may suppose. . . . he is adored by his grandfather, +and then, Robert! They are an affectionate family, and not easy +when removed one from another. . . .' +== + +On their journey from London to Paris, Mr. and Mrs. Browning had been +joined by Carlyle; and it afterwards struck Mr. Browning as strange that, +in the `Life' of Carlyle, their companionship on this occasion +should be spoken of as the result of a chance meeting. Carlyle not only +went to Paris with the Brownings, but had begged permission to do so; +and Mrs. Browning had hesitated to grant this because she was afraid +her little boy would be tiresome to him. Her fear, however, proved mistaken. +The child's prattle amused the philosopher, and led him on one occasion +to say: `Why, sir, you have as many aspirations as Napoleon!' +At Paris he would have been miserable without Mr. Browning's help, +in his ignorance of the language, and impatience of the discomforts +which this created for him. He couldn't ask for anything, he complained, +but they brought him the opposite. + +On one occasion Mr. Carlyle made a singular remark. He was walking +with Mr. Browning, either in Paris or the neighbouring country, +when they passed an image of the Crucifixion; and glancing towards +the figure of Christ, he said, with his deliberate Scotch utterance, +`Ah, poor fellow, YOUR part is played out!' + +Two especially interesting letters are dated from the same address, +February 15 and April 7, 1852. + +== +`. . . Beranger lives close to us, and Robert has seen him +in his white hat, wandering along the asphalte. I had a notion, +somehow, that he was very old, but he is only elderly -- +not much above sixty (which is the prime of life, nowadays) +and he lives quietly and keeps out of scrapes poetical and political, +and if Robert and I had a little less modesty we are assured +that we should find access to him easy. But we can't make up our minds +to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrant minstrels, +when he may probably not know our names. We could never follow +the fashion of certain authors, who send their books about +with intimations of their being likely to be acceptable or not -- +of which practice poor Tennyson knows too much for his peace. +If, indeed, a letter of introduction to Beranger were vouchsafed to us +from any benign quarter, we should both be delighted, +but we must wait patiently for the influence of the stars. +Meanwhile, we have at last sent our letter [Mazzini's] to George Sand, +accompanied with a little note signed by both of us, though written by me, +as seemed right, being the woman. We half-despaired in doing this -- +for it is most difficult, it appears, to get at her, +she having taken vows against seeing strangers, in consequence of +various annoyances and persecutions, in and out of print, which it's +the mere instinct of a woman to avoid -- I can understand it perfectly. +Also, she is in Paris for only a few days, and under a new name, +to escape from the plague of her notoriety. People said, +"She will never see you -- you have no chance, I am afraid." +But we determined to try. At least I pricked Robert up to the leap -- +for he was really inclined to sit in his chair and be proud a little. +"No," said I, "you SHA'N'T be proud, and I WON'T be proud, +and we WILL see her -- I won't die, if I can help it, +without seeing George Sand." So we gave our letter to a friend, +who was to give it to a friend who was to place it in her hands -- +her abode being a mystery, and the name she used unknown. +The next day came by the post this answer: + +`"Madame, j'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche prochain, +rue Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; +et encore je n'en suis pas absolument certaine -- mais je ferai tellement +mon possible, que ma bonne e/toile m'y aidera peut-e^tre un peu. +Agre/ez mille remerciments de coeur ainsi que Monsieur Browning, +que j'espe\re voir avec vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez. + George Sand. +Paris: 12 fevrier '52." + +`This is graceful and kind, is it not? -- and we are going to-morrow -- +I, rather at the risk of my life, but I shall roll myself up head and all +in a thick shawl, and we shall go in a close carriage, and I hope +I shall be able to tell you the result before shutting up this letter. + +`Monday. -- I have seen G. S. She received us in a room with a bed in it, +the only room she has to occupy, I suppose, during her short stay in Paris. +She received us very cordially with her hand held out, which I, +in the emotion of the moment, stooped and kissed -- upon which she exclaimed, +"Mais non! je ne veux pas," and kissed me. I don't think +she is a great deal taller than I am, -- yes, taller, but not a great deal -- +and a little over-stout for that height. The upper part of the face is fine, +the forehead, eyebrows and eyes -- dark glowing eyes as they should be; +the lower part not so good. The beautiful teeth project a little, +flashing out the smile of the large characteristic mouth, +and the chin recedes. It never could have been a beautiful face +Robert and I agree, but noble and expressive it has been and is. +The complexion is olive, quite without colour; the hair, black and glossy, +divided with evident care and twisted back into a knot behind the head, +and she wore no covering to it. Some of the portraits represent her +in ringlets, and ringlets would be much more becoming to the style of face, +I fancy, for the cheeks are rather over-full. She was dressed +in a sort of woollen grey gown, with a jacket of the same material +(according to the ruling fashion), the gown fastened up to the throat, +with a small linen collarette, and plain white muslin sleeves buttoned +round the wrists. The hands offered to me were small and well-shaped. +Her manners were quite as simple as her costume. I never saw a simpler woman. +Not a shade of affectation or consciousness, even -- +not a suffusion of coquetry, not a cigarette to be seen! +Two or three young men were sitting with her, and I observed +the profound respect with which they listened to every word she said. +She spoke rapidly, with a low, unemphatic voice. Repose of manner +is much more her characteristic than animation is -- only, +under all the quietness, and perhaps by means of it, you are aware +of an intense burning soul. She kissed me again when we went away. . . .' +== + +== +`April 7. -- George Sand we came to know a great deal more of. +I think Robert saw her six times. Once he met her near the Tuileries, +offered her his arm and walked with her the whole length of the gardens. +She was not on that occasion looking as well as usual, +being a little too much "endimanchee" in terrestrial lavenders +and super-celestial blues -- not, in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste +which he has seen in her at other times. Her usual costume +is both pretty and quiet, and the fashionable waistcoat and jacket +(which are aspectable (?) in all the "Ladies' Companions" of the day) +make the only approach to masculine wearings to be observed in her. + +`She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think -- +and the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood. + +`Ah! but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I could only +go with Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. +He was really very good and kind to let me go at all after he found +the sort of society rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, +but being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires, +and yielded the point. She seems to live in the abomination of desolation, +as far as regards society -- crowds of ill-bred men who adore her, +`a genoux bas', betwixt a puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva -- +society of the ragged red, diluted with the low theatrical. +She herself so different, so apart, so alone in her melancholy disdain. +I was deeply interested in that poor woman. I felt a profound +compassion for her. I did not mind much even the Greek, in Greek costume, +who `tutoyed' her, and kissed her I believe, so Robert said -- +or the other vulgar man of the theatre, who went down on his knees +and called her "sublime". "Caprice d'amitie," said she +with her quiet, gentle scorn. A noble woman under the mud, be certain. +_I_ would kneel down to her, too, if she would leave it all, throw it off, +and be herself as God made her. But she would not care for my kneeling -- +she does not care for me. Perhaps she doesn't care much for anybody +by this time, who knows? She wrote one or two or three kind notes to me, +and promised to `venir m'embrasser' before she left Paris, +but she did not come. We both tried hard to please her, +and she told a friend of ours that she "liked us". Only we always felt +that we couldn't penetrate -- couldn't really TOUCH her -- it was all vain. + +`Alfred de Musset was to have been at M. Buloz' where Robert was a week ago, +on purpose to meet him, but he was prevented in some way. +His brother, Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead, +but we hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? +He is not capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, +I assure you. . . . We are expecting a visit from Lamartine, +who does a great deal of honour to both of us in the way of appreciation, +and was kind enough to propose to come. I will tell you all about it.' +== + +Mr. Browning fully shared his wife's impression of a want of frank cordiality +on George Sand's part; and was especially struck by it in reference +to himself, with whom it seemed more natural that she should feel at ease. +He could only imagine that his studied courtesy towards her was felt by her +as a rebuke to the latitude which she granted to other men. + +Another eminent French writer whom he much wished to know was Victor Hugo, +and I am told that for years he carried about him a letter of introduction +from Lord Houghton, always hoping for an opportunity of presenting it. +The hope was not fulfilled, though, in 1866, Mr. Browning crossed +to Saint Malo by the Channel Islands and spent three days in Jersey. + + + + +Chapter 11 + +1852-1855 + + M. Joseph Milsand -- His close Friendship with Mr. Browning; + Mrs. Browning's Impression of him -- New Edition of Mr. Browning's Poems -- + `Christmas Eve and Easter Day' -- `Essay' on Shelley -- Summer in London -- + Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Florence; secluded Life -- + Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Browning -- `Colombe's Birthday' -- + Baths of Lucca -- Mrs. Browning's Letters -- Winter in Rome -- + Mr. and Mrs. Story -- Mrs. Sartoris -- Mrs. Fanny Kemble -- + Summer in London -- Tennyson -- Ruskin. + + + +It was during this winter in Paris that Mr. Browning became acquainted +with M. Joseph Milsand, the second Frenchman with whom +he was to be united by ties of deep friendship and affection. +M. Milsand was at that time, and for long afterwards, +a frequent contributor to the `Revue des Deux Mondes'; +his range of subjects being enlarged by his, for a Frenchman, +exceptional knowledge of English life, language, and literature. He wrote +an article on Quakerism, which was much approved by Mr. William Forster, +and a little volume on Ruskin called `L'Esthetique Anglaise', +which was published in the `Bibliotheque de Philosophie Contemporaine'.* +Shortly before the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Browning in Paris, +he had accidentally seen an extract from `Paracelsus'. +This struck him so much that he procured the two volumes of the works +and `Christmas Eve', and discussed the whole in the `Revue' +as the second part of an essay entitled `La Poesie Anglaise depuis Byron'. +Mr. Browning saw the article, and was naturally touched +at finding his poems the object of serious study in a foreign country, +while still so little regarded in his own. It was no less natural +that this should lead to a friendship which, the opening once given, +would have grown up unassisted, at least on Mr. Browning's side; +for M. Milsand united the qualities of a critical intellect with a tenderness, +a loyalty, and a simplicity of nature seldom found in combination with them. + +-- +* He published also an admirable little work on the requirements + of secondary education in France, equally applicable in many respects + to any country and to any time. +-- + +The introduction was brought about by the daughter of William Browning, +Mrs. Jebb-Dyke, or more directly by Mr. and Mrs. Fraser Corkran, +who were among the earliest friends of the Browning family in Paris. +M. Milsand was soon an `habitue' of Mr. Browning's house, +as somewhat later of that of his father and sister; and when, +many years afterwards, Miss Browning had taken up her abode in England, +he spent some weeks of the early summer in Warwick Crescent, +whenever his home duties or personal occupations allowed him to do so. +Several times also the poet and his sister joined him at Saint-Aubin, +the seaside village in Normandy which was his special resort, +and where they enjoyed the good offices of Madame Milsand, a home-staying, +genuine French wife and mother, well acquainted with the resources +of its very primitive life. M. Milsand died, in 1886, of apoplexy, +the consequence, I believe, of heart-disease brought on +by excessive cold-bathing. The first reprint of `Sordello', in 1863, +had been, as is well known, dedicated to him. The `Parleyings', +published within a year of his death, were inscribed to his memory. +Mr. Browning's affection for him finds utterance in a few strong words +which I shall have occasion to quote. An undated fragment concerning him +from Mrs. Browning to her sister-in-law, points to a later date +than the present, but may as well be inserted here. + +== +`. . . I quite love M. Milsand for being interested in Penini. +What a perfect creature he is, to be sure! He always stands in the top place +among our gods -- Give him my cordial regards, always, mind. . . . +He wants, I think -- the only want of that noble nature -- +the sense of spiritual relation; and also he puts under his feet too much +the worth of impulse and passion, in considering the powers of human nature. +For the rest, I don't know such a man. He has intellectual conscience -- +or say -- the conscience of the intellect, in a higher degree than I ever saw +in any man of any country -- and this is no less Robert's belief than mine. +When we hear the brilliant talkers and noisy thinkers +here and there and everywhere, we go back to Milsand with a real reverence. +Also, I never shall forget his delicacy to me personally, +nor his tenderness of heart about my child. . . .' +== + +The criticism was inevitable from the point of view of Mrs. Browning's +nature and experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it +if she had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never +have agreed with her as to the authority of `impulse and passion', +but I am sure he did not underrate their importance as factors in human life. + +M. Milsand was one of the few readers of Browning with whom +I have talked about him, who had studied his work from the beginning, +and had realized the ambition of his first imaginative flights. +He was more perplexed by the poet's utterance in later years. +`Quel homme extraordinaire!' he once said to me; `son centre +n'est pas au milieu.' The usual criticism would have been that, +while his own centre was in the middle, he did not seek it in the middle +for the things of which he wrote; but I remember that, at the moment +in which the words were spoken, they impressed me as full of penetration. +Mr. Browning had so much confidence in M. Milsand's linguistic powers +that he invariably sent him his proof-sheets for final revision, +and was exceedingly pleased with such few corrections +as his friend was able to suggest. + +With the name of Milsand connects itself in the poet's life +that of a younger, but very genuine friend of both, M. Gustave Dourlans: +a man of fine critical and intellectual powers, unfortunately neutralized +by bad health. M. Dourlans also became a visitor at Warwick Crescent, +and a frequent correspondent of Mr. or rather of Miss Browning. +He came from Paris once more, to witness the last sad scene +in Westminster Abbey. + +The first three years of Mr. Browning's married life had been unproductive +from a literary point of view. The realization and enjoyment of +the new companionship, the duties as well as interests of the dual existence, +and, lastly, the shock and pain of his mother's death, +had absorbed his mental energies for the time being. But by the close of 1848 +he had prepared for publication in the following year a new edition +of `Paracelsus' and the `Bells and Pomegranates' poems. The reprint +was in two volumes, and the publishers were Messrs. Chapman and Hall; +the system, maintained through Mr. Moxon, of publication +at the author's expense, being abandoned by Mr. Browning when he left home. +Mrs. Browning writes of him on this occasion that he is paying +`peculiar attention to the objections made against certain obscurities.' +He himself prefaced the edition by these words: `Many of these pieces +were out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from circulation, +when the corrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was prepared. +The various Poems and Dramas have received the author's most careful revision. +December 1848.' + +In 1850, in Florence, he wrote `Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; +and in December 1851, in Paris, the essay on Shelley, +to be prefixed to twenty-five supposed letters of that poet, +published by Moxon in 1852.* + +-- +* They were discovered, not long afterwards, to be spurious, + and the book suppressed. +-- + +The reading of this Essay might serve to correct the frequent misapprehension +of Mr. Browning's religious views which has been based on the literal evidence +of `Christmas Eve', were it not that its companion poem has failed to do so; +though the tendency of `Easter Day' is as different from that of its precursor +as their common Christianity admits. The balance of argument +in `Christmas Eve' is in favour of direct revelation of religious truth +and prosaic certainty regarding it; while the `Easter Day' vision makes +a tentative and unresting attitude the first condition of the religious life; +and if Mr. Browning has meant to say -- as he so often did say -- +that religious certainties are required for the undeveloped mind, +but that the growing religious intelligence walks best by a receding light, +he denies the positive basis of Christian belief, and is no more orthodox +in the one set of reflections than in the other. The spirit, however, +of both poems is ascetic: for the first divorces religious worship +from every appeal to the poetic sense; the second refuses to recognize, +in poetry or art, or the attainments of the intellect, +or even in the best human love, any practical correspondence with religion. +The dissertation on Shelley is, what `Sordello' was, +what its author's treatment of poets and poetry always must be -- +an indirect vindication of the conceptions of human life +which `Christmas Eve and Easter Day' condemns. This double poem stands indeed +so much alone in Mr. Browning's work that we are tempted to ask ourselves +to what circumstance or impulse, external or internal, it has been due; +and we can only conjecture that the prolonged communion with a mind +so spiritual as that of his wife, the special sympathies and differences +which were elicited by it, may have quickened his religious imagination, +while directing it towards doctrinal or controversial issues +which it had not previously embraced. + +The `Essay' is a tribute to the genius of Shelley; it is also a justification +of his life and character, as the balance of evidence then presented them +to Mr. Browning's mind. It rests on a definition of the respective qualities +of the objective and the subjective poet. . . . While both, he says, +are gifted with the fuller perception of nature and man, the one endeavours to + + `reproduce things external (whether the phenomena of the scenic universe, + or the manifested action of the human heart and brain) + with an immediate reference, in every case, to the common eye + and apprehension of his fellow-men, assumed capable of receiving + and profiting by this reproduction' -- the other `is impelled to embody + the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, + as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends + all things in their absolute truth, -- an ultimate view ever aspired to, + if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. + Not what man sees, but what God sees -- the `Ideas' of Plato, + seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand -- it is toward these + that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, + but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; + and he digs where he stands, -- preferring to seek them in his own soul + as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions + of which he desires to perceive and speak.' + +The objective poet is therefore a fashioner, the subjective is best described +as a seer. The distinction repeats itself in the interest with which we study +their respective lives. We are glad of the biography of the objective poet +because it reveals to us the power by which he works; we desire still more +that of the subjective poet, because it presents us with another aspect +of the work itself. The poetry of such a one is an effluence +much more than a production; it is + + `the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it + but not separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, + we necessarily approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it + we apprehend him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him.' + +The reason of Mr. Browning's prolonged and instinctive reverence for Shelley +is thus set forth in the opening pages of the Essay: +he recognized in his writings the quality of a `subjective' poet; +hence, as he understands the word, the evidence of a divinely inspired man. + +Mr. Browning goes on to say that we need the recorded life in order +quite to determine to which class of inspiration a given work belongs; +and though he regards the work of Shelley as carrying its warrant +within itself, his position leaves ample room for a withdrawal of faith, +a reversal of judgment, if the ascertained facts of the poet's life +should at any future time bear decided witness against him. +He is also careful to avoid drawing too hard and fast a line between +the two opposite kinds of poet. He admits that a pure instance of either +is seldom to be found; he sees no reason why + + `these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter + from the same poet in successive perfect works. . . . + A mere running-in of the one faculty upon the other' being, + meanwhile, `the ordinary circumstance.' + +I venture, however, to think, that in his various and necessary concessions, +he lets slip the main point; and for the simple reason that it is untenable. +The terms `subjective' and `objective' denote a real and very important +difference on the ground of judgment, but one which tends more and more +to efface itself in the sphere of the higher creative imagination. +Mr. Browning might as briefly, and I think more fully, have expressed +the salient quality of his poet, even while he could describe it +in these emphatic words: + + `I pass at once, therefore, from Shelley's minor excellencies + to his noblest and predominating characteristic. + + `This I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, + and of Beauty and Good in the concrete, while he throws, + from his poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, + and more numerous films for the connexion of each with each, + than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge . . . + I would rather consider Shelley's poetry as a sublime fragmentary essay + towards a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity, + of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal than . . .' + +This essay has, in common with the poems of the preceding years, +the one quality of a largely religious and, in a certain sense, +Christian spirit, and in this respect it falls naturally +into the general series of its author's works. The assertion +of Platonic ideas suggests, however, a mood of spiritual thought +for which the reference in `Pauline' has been our only, +and a scarcely sufficient preparation; nor could the most definite theism +to be extracted from Platonic beliefs ever satisfy the human aspirations +which, in a nature like that of Robert Browning, culminate in the idea of God. +The metaphysical aspect of the poet's genius here distinctly reappears +for the first time since `Sordello', and also for the last. +It becomes merged in the simpler forms of the religious imagination. + +The justification of the man Shelley, to which great part of the Essay +is devoted, contains little that would seem new to his more recent apologists; +little also which to the writer's later judgments continued +to recommend itself as true. It was as a great poetic artist, +not as a great poet, that the author of `Prometheus' and `The Cenci', +of `Julian and Maddalo', and `Epipsychidion' was finally to rank +in Mr. Browning's mind. The whole remains nevertheless +a memorial of a very touching affection; and whatever intrinsic value +the Essay may possess, its main interest must always be biographical. +Its motive and inspiration are set forth in the closing lines: + + `It is because I have long held these opinions in assurance and gratitude, + that I catch at the opportunity offered to me of expressing them here; + knowing that the alacrity to fulfil an humble office conveys more love + than the acceptance of the honour of a higher one, and that better, + therefore, than the signal service it was the dream of my boyhood to render + to his fame and memory, may be the saying of a few, inadequate words + upon these scarcely more important supplementary letters of SHELLEY.' + +If Mr. Browning had seen reason to doubt the genuineness +of the letters in question, his Introduction could not have been written. +That, while receiving them as genuine, he thought them unimportant, +gave it, as he justly discerned, its full significance. + +Mr. and Mrs. Browning returned to London for the summer of 1852, +and we have a glimpse of them there in a letter from Mr. Fox to his daughter. + +== + July 16, '52. + +`. . . I had a charming hour with the Brownings yesterday; +more fascinated with her than ever. She talked lots of George Sand, +and so beautifully. Moreover she silver-electroplated Louis Napoleon!! +They are lodging at 58 Welbeck Street; the house has a queer name on the door, +and belongs to some Belgian family. + +`They came in late one night, and R. B. says that in the morning twilight +he saw three portraits on the bedroom wall, and speculated who they might be. +Light gradually showed the first, Beatrice Cenci, "Good!" said he; +"in a poetic region." More light: the second, Lord Byron! +Who can the third be? And what think you it was, but your sketch +(engraved chalk portrait) of me? He made quite a poem and picture +of the affair. + +`She seems much better; did not put her hand before her mouth, +which I took as a compliment: and the young Florentine was gracious . . .' +== + +It need hardly be said that this valued friend was one of the first +whom Mr. Browning introduced to his wife, and that she responded +with ready warmth to his claims on her gratitude and regard. +More than one joint letter from herself and her husband +commemorates this new phase of the intimacy; one especially interesting +was written from Florence in 1858, in answer to the announcement by Mr. Fox +of his election for Oldham; and Mr. Browning's contribution, +which is very characteristic, will appear in due course. + +Either this or the preceding summer brought Mr. Browning for the first time +into personal contact with an early lover of his works: Mr. D. G. Rossetti. +They had exchanged letters a year or two before, on the subject of `Pauline', +which Rossetti (as I have already mentioned) had read in ignorance of +its origin, but with the conviction that only the author of `Paracelsus' +could have produced it. He wrote to Mr. Browning to ascertain the fact, +and to tell him he had admired the poem so much as to transcribe it whole from +the British Museum copy. He now called on him with Mr. William Allingham; +and doubly recommended himself to the poet's interest by telling him +that he was a painter. When Mr. Browning was again in London, in 1855, +Rossetti began painting his portrait, which he finished in Paris +in the ensuing winter. + +The winter of 1852-3 saw the family once more in Florence, and at Casa Guidi, +where the routine of quiet days was resumed. Mrs. Browning has spoken +in more than one of her letters of the comparative social seclusion in which +she and her husband had elected to live. This seclusion was much modified +in later years, and many well-known English and American names +become associated with their daily life. It referred indeed almost entirely +to their residence in Florence, where they found less inducement +to enter into society than in London, Paris, and Rome. +But it is on record that during the fifteen years of his married life, +Mr. Browning never dined away from home, except on one occasion -- +an exception proving the rule; and we cannot therefore be surprised +that he should subsequently have carried into the experience +of an unshackled and very interesting social intercourse, +a kind of freshness which a man of fifty has not generally preserved. + +The one excitement which presented itself in the early months of 1853 +was the production of `Colombe's Birthday'. The first allusion to this +comes to us in a letter from the poet to Lady, then Mrs. Theodore, Martin, +from which I quote a few passages. + +== + Florence: Jan. 31, '53. + +`My dear Mrs. Martin, -- . . . be assured that I, for my part, have been +in no danger of forgetting my promises any more than your performances -- +which were admirable of all kinds. I shall be delighted +if you can do anything for "Colombe" -- do what you think best with it, +and for me -- it will be pleasant to be in such hands -- +only, pray follow the corrections in the last edition -- +(Chapman and Hall will give you a copy) -- as they are important to the sense. +As for the condensation into three acts -- I shall leave that, +and all cuttings and the like, to your own judgment -- and, come what will, +I shall have to be grateful to you, as before. For the rest, +you will play the part to heart's content, I KNOW . . . And how good +it will be to see you again, and make my wife see you too -- she who +"never saw a great actress" she says -- unless it was Dejazet! . . .' +== + +Mrs. Browning writes about the performance, April 12: + +== +`. . . I am beginning to be anxious about `Colombe's Birthday'. +I care much more about it than Robert does. He says that no one +will mistake it for his speculation; it's Mr. Buckstone's affair altogether. +True -- but I should like it to succeed, being Robert's play, notwithstanding. +But the play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. +I am nervous about it. On the other hand, those theatrical people +ought to know, -- and what in the world made them select it, +if it is not likely to answer their purpose? By the way, +a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been "prepared for the stage +by the author." Don't believe a word of it. Robert just said "yes" +when they wrote to ask him, and not a line of communication has passed since. +He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing. +He referred them to his new edition, and that was the whole. . . .' +== + +She communicates the result in May: + +== +`. . . Yes, Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" +for a play of that kind. It was a "succes d'estime" and something more, +which is surprising perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. +Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice. . . .' +== + +Mrs. Browning did see `Miss Faucit' on her next visit to England. +She agreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone, +one morning, at her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half. +The only person who had `done justice' to `Colombe' besides contributing +to whatever success her husband's earlier plays had obtained, +was much more than `a great actress' to Mrs. Browning's mind; +and we may imagine it would have gone hard with her +before she renounced the pleasure of making her acquaintance. + +Two letters, dated from the Baths of Lucca, July 15 and August 20, '53, +tell how and where the ensuing summer was passed, besides introducing us, +for the first time, to Mr. and Mrs. William Story, between whose family +and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was ever afterwards +to subsist. + +== + July 15. + +`. . . We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a little holy fear +of the company there -- but the scenery, and the coolness, +and convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa +for three months or rather more, and go to it next week +with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon. +You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago +just after the birth of our child. The mountains are wonderful in beauty, +and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work. + +`Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with it +the idea of home. . . .' +== + +== + Casa Tolomei, Alta Villa, Bagni di Lucca: Aug. 20. + +`. . . We are enjoying the mountains here -- riding the donkeys +in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful. +The strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer, +through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled +in the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, +and the peasants sell them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends +Mr. and Mrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal. +He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, +and for himself, sculptor and poet -- and she a sympathetic graceful woman, +fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea +and talk at one another's houses. + +`. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion +to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. +We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling +down various precipices -- but the scenery was exquisite -- +past speaking of for beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains, +rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts and setting their teeth +against the sky -- it was wonderful. . . .' +== + +Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was `In a Balcony'; +also, probably, some of the `Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration +in `By the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge +to which he walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton, +was also an incident of this summer. + +The next three letters from which I am able to quote, +describe the impressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome. + +== + Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 3o piano. Jan. 18, 54. + +`. . . Well, we are all well to begin with -- and have been well -- +our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey +of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery +and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way -- +that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. +In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually -- +for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change +of air and scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys +-- how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly +at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, +so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, -- +and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. +In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us +by the manservant with a message, "the boy was in convulsions -- +there was danger." We hurried to the house, of course, +leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day +we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied -- +never opened his eyes in consciousness -- and by eight in the evening +he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house -- +could not be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever, +with a tendency to the brain -- and within two days her life +was almost despaired of -- exactly the same malady as her brother's. . . . +Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Story's house, +and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease. + +`. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once +that the three patients recovered -- only in poor little Edith's case +Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since +in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin. +Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting. . . . +Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death +have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed, +the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid +close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph) +and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out +in the carriage together -- I am horribly weak about such things -- +I can't look on the earth-side of death -- I flinch from corpses and graves, +and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. +When I look deathwards I look OVER death, and upwards, +or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me +to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother +sat so calmly -- not to drop from the seat. Well -- all this +has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars +in the old strain of thought -- the antique words get muddled and blurred +with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. +Rome is spoilt to me -- there's the truth. Still, one lives through +one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived +at almost enjoying some things -- the climate, for instance, +which, though pernicious to the general health, agrees particularly with me, +and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps +and rifts of ruins. . . . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned +to the sun, and do work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, +hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris's (A. K.) once or twice a week, +and have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, +we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly. + +`If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust +swept out of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides! . . .' +== + +== + Rome: March 29. + +`. . . We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, +especially Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair +and radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic, +unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought and convention -- +but noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. She thinks me +credulous and full of dreams -- but does not despise me for that reason -- +which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for I should not be +quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous -- +her milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy family relations, +which poor Fanny Kemble's has not had. Mrs. Sartoris' house +has the best society in Rome -- and exquisite music of course. +We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him -- +more than I do -- because of the access of cold weather lately +which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside, +on a day's excursion with him and the Sartorises -- and I hear +found favour in his sight. Said the critic, "I like Browning -- +he isn't at all like a damned literary man." That's a compliment, +I believe, according to your dictionary. It made me laugh +and think of you directly. . . . Robert has been sitting for his picture +to Mr. Fisher, the English artist who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor. +You remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house in London. +Well, he has painted Robert's, and it is an admirable likeness. +The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic. . . .' +== + +== + May 19. + +`. . . To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. +I don't pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. +It's a palimpsest Rome, a watering-place written over the antique, +and I haven't taken to it as a poet should I suppose. +And let us speak the truth above all things. I am strongly +a creature of association, and the associations of the place +have not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child, +the light of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him. . . . +The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the two sisters, +who are charming and excellent both of them, in different ways, +and certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna, +upon picnic excursions -- they, and certain of their friends; +for instance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, +who is witty and agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, +who is an agreeable man, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. +The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, +but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise and champagne. . . .' +== + +It must have been on one of the excursions here described that an incident +took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristic comments +in a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnic party +had strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was not strong enough +to join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, stayed with her; +which act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble to exclaim +that he was the only man she had ever known who behaved like a Christian +to his wife. She was, when he wrote this letter, reading his works +for the first time, and had expressed admiration for them; +but, he continued, none of the kind things she said to him on that subject +could move him as did those words in the Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would have +modified her statement in later years, for the sake of one English +and one American husband now closely related to her. Even then, perhaps, +she did not make it without inward reserve. But she will forgive me, +I am sure, for having repeated it. + +Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, and says: +`I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener than is set down, +but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked her extremely.' + +Another of Mrs. Browning's letters is written from Florence, June 6 ('54): + +== +`. . . We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then +go northward. I love Florence -- the place looks exquisitely beautiful +in its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round +by the nightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another, +there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, +for a place to live in -- cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, +within the limits of civilization yet out of the crush of it. . . . +We have spent two delicious evenings at villas outside the gates, +one with young Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think. +I like him . . . we both do . . . from the bottom of our hearts. +Then, our friend, Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted +to see again. + + . . . . . + +`. . . Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most +of her time with us . . . singing passionately and talking eloquently. +She is really charming. . . .' +== + +I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of +the winter of 1854-5. In all probability Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in, +or as near as possible to, Florence, since their income was still too limited +for continuous travelling. They possibly talked of going to England, +but postponed it till the following year; we know that they went there +in 1855, taking his sister with them as they passed through Paris. +They did not this time take lodgings for the summer months, +but hired a house at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square; +and there, on September 27, Tennyson read his new poem, `Maud', +to Mrs. Browning, while Rossetti, the only other person present +besides the family, privately drew his likeness in pen and ink. +The likeness has become well known; the unconscious sitter must also, +by this time, be acquainted with it; but Miss Browning thinks +no one except herself, who was near Rossetti at the table, was at the moment +aware of its being made. All eyes must have been turned towards Tennyson, +seated by his hostess on the sofa. Miss Arabel Barrett was also of the party. + +Some interesting words of Mrs. Browning's carry their date +in the allusion to Mr. Ruskin; but I cannot ascertain it more precisely: + +== +`We went to Denmark Hill yesterday to have luncheon with them, +and see the Turners, which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, +and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest, -- refined and truthful. +I like him very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances +made this year in England.' +== + + + + +Chapter 12 + +1855-1858 + + `Men and Women' -- `Karshook' -- `Two in the Campagna' -- Winter in Paris; + Lady Elgin -- `Aurora Leigh' -- Death of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett -- + Penini -- Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Browning -- + The Florentine Carnival -- Baths of Lucca -- Spiritualism -- + Mr. Kirkup; Count Ginnasi -- Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox -- Havre. + + + +The beautiful `One Word More' was dated from London in September; +and the fifty poems gathered together under the title of `Men and Women' +were published before the close of the year, in two volumes, +by Messrs. Chapman and Hall.* They are all familiar friends +to Mr. Browning's readers, in their first arrangement and appearance, +as in later redistributions and reprints; but one curious little fact +concerning them is perhaps not generally known. In the eighth line +of the fourteenth section of `One Word More' they were made to include +`Karshook (Ben Karshook's Wisdom)', which never was placed amongst them. +It was written in April 1854; and the dedication of the volume must have been, +as it so easily might be, in existence, before the author decided to omit it. +The wrong name, once given, was retained, I have no doubt, +from preference for its terminal sound; and `Karshook' only became `Karshish' +in the Tauchnitz copy of 1872, and in the English edition of 1889. + +-- +* The date is given in the edition of 1868 as London 185-; + in the Tauchnitz selection of 1872, London and Florence 184- and 185-; + in the new English edition 184- and 185-. +-- + +`Karshook' appeared in 1856 in `The Keepsake', edited by Miss Power; +but, as we are told on good authority, has been printed +in no edition or selection of the Poet's works. I am therefore justified +in inserting it here. + +== + I + +`Would a man 'scape the rod?' + Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, +`See that he turn to God + The day before his death.' + +`Ay, could a man inquire + When it shall come!' I say. +The Rabbi's eye shoots fire -- + `Then let him turn to-day!' + + + II + +Quoth a young Sadducee: + `Reader of many rolls, +Is it so certain we + Have, as they tell us, souls?' + +`Son, there is no reply!' + The Rabbi bit his beard: +`Certain, a soul have _I_ -- + WE may have none,' he sneer'd. + +Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, + The Right-hand Temple-column, +Taught babes in grace their grammar, + And struck the simple, solemn. +== + +Among this first collection of `Men and Women' was the poem +called `Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study +of a restless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, +saddened and perplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. +Nothing that should impress one as more purely dramatic +ever fell from Mr. Browning's pen. We are told, nevertheless, +in Mr. Sharp's `Life', that a personal character no less actual +than that of the `Guardian Angel' has been claimed for it. The writer, +with characteristic delicacy, evades all discussion of the question; +but he concedes a great deal in his manner of doing so. The poem, he says, +conveys a sense of that necessary isolation of the individual soul +which resists the fusing power of the deepest love; and its meaning +cannot be personally -- because it is universally -- true. +I do not think Mr. Browning meant to emphasize this aspect of the mystery +of individual life, though the poem, in a certain sense, expresses it. +We have no reason to believe that he ever accepted it as constant; +and in no case could he have intended to refer its conditions to himself. +He was often isolated by the processes of his mind; +but there was in him no barrier to that larger emotional sympathy +which we think of as sympathy of the soul. If this poem were true, +`One Word More' would be false, quite otherwise than in +that approach to exaggeration which is incidental to the poetic form. +The true keynote of `Two in the Campagna' is the pain of perpetual change, +and of the conscious, though unexplained, predestination to it. +Mr. Browning could have still less in common with such a state, +since one of the qualities for which he was most conspicuous +was the enormous power of anchorage which his affections possessed. +Only length of time and variety of experience could fully test this power +or fully display it; but the signs of it had not been absent +from even his earliest life. He loved fewer people in youth +than in advancing age: nature and circumstance combined to widen the range, +and vary the character of his human interests; but where once +love or friendship had struck a root, only a moral convulsion +could avail to dislodge it. I make no deduction from this statement +when I admit that the last and most emphatic words of the poem in question, + + Only I discern -- + Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn, + +did probably come from the poet's heart, as they also found a deep echo +in that of his wife, who much loved them. + +From London they returned to Paris for the winter of 1855-6. +The younger of the Kemble sisters, Mrs. Sartoris, was also there +with her family; and the pleasant meetings of the Campagna +renewed themselves for Mr. Browning, though in a different form. +He was also, with his sister, a constant visitor at Lady Elgin's. +Both they and Mrs. Browning were greatly attached to her, +and she warmly reciprocated the feeling. As Mr. Locker's letter has told us, +Mr. Browning was in the habit of reading poetry to her, +and when his sister had to announce his arrival from Italy or England, +she would say: `Robert is coming to nurse you, and read to you.' +Lady Elgin was by this time almost completely paralyzed. +She had lost the power of speech, and could only acknowledge +the little attentions which were paid to her by some graceful pathetic gesture +of the left hand; but she retained her sensibilities to the last; +and Miss Browning received on one occasion a serious lesson +in the risk of ever assuming that the appearance of unconsciousness +guarantees its reality. Lady Augusta Bruce had asked her, +in her mother's presence, how Mrs. Browning was; and, +imagining that Lady Elgin was unable to hear or understand, +she had answered with incautious distinctness, `I am afraid she is very ill,' +when a little sob from the invalid warned her of her mistake. +Lady Augusta quickly repaired it by rejoining, `but she is better +than she was, is she not?' Miss Browning of course assented. + +There were other friends, old and new, whom Mr. Browning occasionally saw, +including, I need hardly say, the celebrated Madame Mohl. +In the main, however, he led a quiet life, putting aside many inducements +to leave his home. + +Mrs. Browning was then writing `Aurora Leigh', and her husband +must have been more than ever impressed by her power of work, +as displayed by her manner of working. To him, as to most creative writers, +perfect quiet was indispensable to literary production. She wrote in pencil, +on scraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room, +open to interruption from chance visitors, or from her little omnipresent son; +simply hiding the paper beside her if anyone came in, and taking it up again +when she was free. And if this process was conceivable in the large, +comparatively silent spaces of their Italian home, and amidst habits of life +which reserved social intercourse for the close of the working day, +it baffles belief when one thinks of it as carried on in the conditions +of a Parisian winter, and the little `salon' of the apartment +in the Rue du Colisee in which those months were spent. +The poem was completed in the ensuing summer, in Mr. Kenyon's London house, +and dedicated, October 17, in deeply pathetic words to that faithful friend, +whom the writer was never to see again. + +The news of his death, which took place in December 1856, +reached Mr. and Mrs. Browning in Florence, to be followed in the spring +by that of Mrs. Browning's father. Husband and wife had both determined +to forego any pecuniary benefit which might accrue to them from this event; +but they were not called upon to exercise their powers of renunciation. +By Mr. Kenyon's will they were the richer, as is now, I think, +generally known, the one by six thousand, the other by four thousand guineas.* +Of that cousin's long kindness Mrs. Browning could scarcely in after-days +trust herself to speak. It was difficult to her, she said, +even to write his name without tears. + +-- +* Mr. Kenyon had considerable wealth, derived, like Mr. Barrett's, + from West Indian estates. +-- + +I have alluded, perhaps tardily, to Mr. Browning's son, +a sociable little being who must for some time have been playing +a prominent part in his parents' lives. I saw him for the first time +in this winter of 1855-6, and remember the grave expression +of the little round face, the outline of which was common, +at all events in childhood, to all the members of his mother's family, +and was conspicuous in her, if we may trust an early portrait +which has recently come to light. He wore the curling hair +to which she refers in a later letter, and pretty frocks and frills, +in which she delighted to clothe him. It is on record that, +on one of the journeys of this year, a trunk was temporarily lost +which contained Peni's embroidered trousers, and the MS., whole or in part, +of `Aurora Leigh'; and that Mrs. Browning had scarcely a thought +to spare for her poem, in face of the damage to her little boy's appearance +which the accident involved. + +How he came by his familiar name of Penini -- hence Peni, and Pen -- +neither signifies in itself, nor has much bearing on his father's +family history; but I cannot refrain from a word of comment on Mr. Hawthorne's +fantastic conjecture, which has been asserted and reasserted +in opposition to Mr. Browning's own statement of the case. +According to Mr. Hawthorne, the name was derived from Apennino, +and bestowed on the child in babyhood, because Apennino was a colossal statue, +and he was so very small. It would be strange indeed +that any joke connecting `Baby' with a given colossal statue +should have found its way into the family without father, mother, or nurse +being aware of it; or that any joke should have been accepted there +which implied that the little boy was not of normal size. +But the fact is still more unanswerable that Apennino could +by no process congenial to the Italian language be converted into Penini. +Its inevitable abbreviation would be Pennino with a distinct separate sounding +of the central n's, or Nino. The accentuation of Penini +is also distinctly German. + +During this winter in Paris, little Wiedemann, as his parents +tried to call him -- his full name was Robert Wiedemann Barrett -- +had developed a decided turn for blank verse. He would extemporize +short poems, singing them to his mother, who wrote them down as he sang. +There is no less proof of his having possessed a talent for music, +though it first naturally showed itself in the love of a cheerful noise. +His father had once sat down to the piano, for a serious study of some piece, +when the little boy appeared, with the evident intention +of joining in the performance. Mr. Browning rose precipitately, +and was about to leave the room. `Oh!' exclaimed the hurt mother, +`you are going away, and he has brought his three drums +to accompany you upon.' She herself would undoubtedly have endured +the mixed melody for a little time, though her husband did not think +she seriously wished him to do so. But if he did not play the piano +to the accompaniment of Pen's drums, he played piano duets with him +as soon as the boy was old enough to take part in them; +and devoted himself to his instruction in this, as in other +and more important branches of knowledge. + +Peni had also his dumb companions, as his father had had before him. +Tortoises lived at one end of the famous balcony at Casa Guidi; +and when the family were at the Baths of Lucca, Mr. Browning would stow away +little snakes in his bosom, and produce them for the child's amusement. +As the child grew into a man, the love of animals which he had inherited +became conspicuous in him; and it gave rise to many amusing +and some pathetic little episodes of his artist life. +The creatures which he gathered about him were generally, I think, +more highly organized than those which elicited his father's +peculiar tenderness; it was natural that he should exact +more pictorial or more companionable qualities from them. +But father and son concurred in the fondness for snakes, +and in a singular predilection for owls; and they had not been +long established in Warwick Crescent, when a bird of that family +was domesticated there. We shall hear of it in a letter from Mr. Browning. + +Of his son's moral quality as quite a little child his father has told me +pretty and very distinctive stories, but they would be out of place here.* + +-- +* I am induced, on second thoughts, to subjoin one of these, for its testimony + to the moral atmosphere into which the child had been born. + He was sometimes allowed to play with a little boy not of his own class -- + perhaps the son of a `contadino'. The child was unobjectionable, + or neither Penini nor his parents would have endured the association; + but the servants once thought themselves justified + in treating him cavalierly, and Pen flew indignant to his mother, + to complain of their behaviour. Mrs. Browning at once sought + little Alessandro, with kind words and a large piece of cake; but this, + in Pen's eyes, only aggravated the offence; it was a direct reflection + on his visitor's quality. `He doesn't tome for take,' he burst forth; + `he tomes because he is my friend.' How often, since I heard this first, + have we repeated the words, `he doesn't tome for take,' + in half-serious definition of a disinterested person or act! + They became a standing joke. +-- + +Mrs. Browning seems now to have adopted the plan of writing +independent letters to her sister-in-law; and those available for our purpose +are especially interesting. The buoyancy of tone which has habitually +marked her communications, but which failed during the winter in Rome, +reasserts itself in the following extract. Her maternal comments +on Peni and his perfections have hitherto been so carefully excluded, +that a brief allusion to him may be allowed on the present occasion. + +== + 1857. + +`My dearest Sarianna, . . . Here is Penini's letter, which takes up +so much room that I must be sparing of mine -- and, by the way, +if you consider him improved in his writing, give the praise to Robert, +who has been taking most patient pains with him indeed. +You will see how the little curly head is turned with carnival doings. +So gay a carnival never was in our experience, for until last year +(when we were absent) all masks had been prohibited, and now everybody +has eaten of the tree of good and evil till not an apple is left. +Peni persecuted me to let him have a domino -- with tears and embraces -- +he "ALMOST NEVER in all his life had had a domino," and he would like it so. +Not a black domino! no -- he hated black -- but a blue domino, +trimmed with pink! that was his taste. The pink trimming I coaxed him out of, +but for the rest, I let him have his way. . . . For my part, +the universal madness reached me sitting by the fire (whence I had not stirred +for three months), and you will open your eyes when I tell you that I went +(in domino and masked) to the great opera-ball. Yes! I did, really. +Robert, who had been invited two or three times to other people's boxes, +had proposed to return their kindness by taking a box himself +at the opera this night, and entertaining two or three friends +with galantine and champagne. Just as he and I were lamenting +the impossibility of my going, on that very morning the wind changed, +the air grew soft and mild, and he maintained that I might and should go. +There was no time to get a domino of my own (Robert himself +had a beautiful one made, and I am having it metamorphosed +into a black silk gown for myself!) so I sent out and hired one, +buying the mask. And very much amused I was. I like to see +these characteristic things. (I shall never rest, Sarianna, +till I risk my reputation at the `bal de l'opera' at Paris). +Do you think I was satisfied with staying in the box? No, indeed. +Down I went, and Robert and I elbowed our way through the crowd +to the remotest corner of the ball below. Somebody smote me on the shoulder +and cried "Bella Mascherina!" and I answered as impudently +as one feels under a mask. At two o'clock in the morning, however, +I had to give up and come away (being overcome by the heavy air) +and ingloriously left Robert and our friends to follow at half-past four. +Think of the refinement and gentleness -- yes, I must call it SUPERIORITY +of this people -- when no excess, no quarrelling, no rudeness nor coarseness +can be observed in the course of such wild masked liberty; +not a touch of licence anywhere, and perfect social equality! +Our servant Ferdinando side by side in the same ball-room with the Grand Duke, +and no class's delicacy offended against! For the Grand Duke +went down into the ball-room for a short time. . . .' +== + +The summer of 1857 saw the family once more at the Baths of Lucca, +and again in company with Mr. Lytton. He had fallen ill +at the house of their common friend, Miss Blagden, also a visitor there; +and Mr. Browning shared in the nursing, of which she refused to entrust +any part to less friendly hands. He sat up with the invalid for four nights; +and would doubtless have done so for as many more as seemed necessary, +but that Mrs. Browning protested against this trifling with his own health. + +The only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning and his wife +referred to the subject of spiritualism. Mrs. Browning held doctrines +which prepared her to accept any real or imagined phenomena +betokening intercourse with the spirits of the dead; nor could she be repelled +by anything grotesque or trivial in the manner of this intercourse, +because it was no part of her belief that a spirit still inhabiting +the atmosphere of our earth, should exhibit any dignity or solemnity +not belonging to him while he lived upon it. The question +must have been discussed by them on its general grounds +at a very early stage of their intimacy; but it only assumed +practical importance when Mr. Home came to Florence in 1857 or 1858. +Mr. Browning found himself compelled to witness some of the `manifestations'. +He was keenly alive to their generally prosaic and irreverent character, +and to the appearance of jugglery which was then involved in them. +He absolutely denied the good faith of all the persons concerned. +Mrs. Browning as absolutely believed it; and no compromise between them +was attainable, because, strangely enough, neither of them +admitted as possible that mediums or witnesses should deceive themselves. +The personal aspect which the question thus received +brought it into closer and more painful contact with their daily life. +They might agree to differ as to the abstract merits of spiritualism; +but Mr. Browning could not resign himself to his wife's trustful attitude +towards some of the individuals who at that moment represented it. +He may have had no substantial fear of her doing anything that could place her +in their power, though a vague dread of this seems to have haunted him; +but he chafed against the public association of her name with theirs. +Both his love for and his pride in her resented it. + +He had subsided into a more judicial frame of mind when he wrote +`Sludge the Medium', in which he says everything which can excuse the liar +and, what is still more remarkable, modify the lie. So far back +as the autumn of 1860 I heard him discuss the trickery +which he believed himself to have witnessed, as dispassionately +as any other non-credulous person might have done so. +The experience must even before that have passed out of the foreground +of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, subject, for many years, +to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which would sweep over him +whenever the question of `spirits' or `spiritualism' was revived; +and we can only understand this in connection with the peculiar circumstances +of the case. With all his faith in the future, with all his constancy +to the past, the memory of pain was stronger in him than any other. +A single discordant note in the harmony of that married love, +though merged in its actual existence, would send intolerable vibrations +through his remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in this instance, +that of simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. Browning's +refusal to admit that disagreement was possible. She never believed +in her husband's disbelief; and he had been not unreasonably annoyed by her +always assuming it to be feigned. But his doubt of spiritualistic sincerity +was not feigned. She cannot have thought, and scarcely can have meant +to say so. She may have meant to say, `You believe that these are tricks, +but you know that there is something real behind them;' +and so far, if no farther, she may have been in the right. +Mr. Browning never denied the abstract possibility of spiritual communication +with either living or dead; he only denied that such communication +had ever been proved, or that any useful end could be subserved by it. +The tremendous potentialities of hypnotism and thought-reading, +now passing into the region of science, were not then so remote but that +an imagination like his must have foreshadowed them. The natural basis +of the seemingly supernatural had not yet entered into discussion. +He may, from the first, have suspected the existence of some mysterious force, +dangerous because not understood, and for this reason doubly liable +to fall into dangerous hands. And if this was so, he would necessarily +regard the whole system of manifestations with an apprehensive hostility, +which was not entire negation, but which rebelled against +any effort on the part of others, above all of those he loved, +to interpret it into assent. The pain and anger which could be aroused in him +by an indication on the part of a valued friend of even an impartial interest +in the subject points especially to the latter conclusion. + +He often gave an instance of the tricks played in the name of spiritualism +on credulous persons, which may amuse those who have not yet heard it. +I give the story as it survives in the fresher memory of Mr. Val Prinsep, +who also received it from Mr. Browning. + +== +`At Florence lived a curious old savant who in his day was well known to all +who cared for art or history. I fear now few live who recollect Kirkup. +He was quite a mine of information on all kinds of forgotten lore. +It was he who discovered Giotto's portrait of Dante in the Bargello. +Speaking of some friend, he said, "He is a most ignorant fellow! +Why, he does not know how to cast a horoscope!" Of him Browning told me +the following story. Kirkup was much taken up with spiritualism, +in which he firmly believed. One day Browning called on him to borrow a book. +He rang loudly at the storey, for he knew Kirkup, like Landor, was quite deaf. +To his astonishment the door opened at once and Kirkup appeared. + +`"Come in," he cried; "the spirits told me there was some one at the door. +Ah! I know you do not believe! Come and see. Mariana is in a trance!" + +`Browning entered. In the middle room, full of all kinds of curious +objects of "vertu", stood a handsome peasant girl, with her eyes fixed +as though she were in a trance. + +`"You see, Browning," said Kirkup, "she is quite insensible, +and has no will of her own. Mariana, hold up your arm." + +`The woman slowly did as she was bid. + +`"She cannot take it down till I tell her," cried Kirkup. + +`"Very curious," observed Browning. "Meanwhile I have come to ask you +to lend me a book." + +`Kirkup, as soon as he was made to hear what book was wanted, +said he should be delighted. + +`"Wait a bit. It is in the next room." + +`The old man shuffled out at the door. No sooner had he disappeared +than the woman turned to Browning, winked, and putting down her arm +leaned it on his shoulder. When Kirkup returned she resumed her position +and rigid look. + +`"Here is the book," said Kirkup. "Isn't it wonderful?" he added, +pointing to the woman. + +`"Wonderful," agreed Browning as he left the room. + +`The woman and her family made a good thing of poor Kirkup's spiritualism.' +== + +Something much more remarkable in reference to this subject +happened to the poet himself during his residence in Florence. +It is related in a letter to the `Spectator', dated January 30, 1869, +and signed J. S. K. + +== +`Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years since, +an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at Florence, +was brought to his house without previous introduction, by an intimate friend. +The Count professed to have great mesmeric and clairvoyant faculties, +and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed scepticism, +that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of his powers. +He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there, +which he could hand to him, and which was in any way a relic or memento. +This Mr. Browning thought was perhaps because he habitually +wore no sort of trinket or ornament, not even a watchguard, +and might therefore turn out to be a safe challenge. But it so happened that, +by a curious accident, he was then wearing under his coat-sleeves +some gold wrist-studs which he had quite recently taken into wear, +in the absence (by mistake of a sempstress) of his ordinary wrist-buttons. +He had never before worn them in Florence or elsewhere, +and had found them in some old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. +One of these studs he took out and handed to the Count, +who held it in his hand a while, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning's face, +and then he said, as if much impressed, "C'e\ qualche cosa che mi grida +nell' orecchio `Uccisione! uccisione!'" ("There is something here +which cries out in my ear, `Murder! murder!'") + +`"And truly," says Mr. Browning, "those very studs were taken +from the dead body of a great uncle of mine who was violently killed +on his estate in St. Kitt's, nearly eighty years ago. . . . +The occurrence of my great uncle's murder was known only to myself +of all men in Florence, as certainly was also my possession of the studs."' +== + +A letter from the poet, of July 21, 1883, affirms that the account +is correct in every particular, adding, `My own explanation of the matter +has been that the shrewd Italian felt his way by the involuntary help +of my own eyes and face.' The story has been reprinted +in the Reports of the Psychical Society. + +A pleasant piece of news came to brighten the January of 1858. +Mr. Fox was returned for Oldham, and at once wrote to announce the fact. +He was answered in a joint letter from Mr. and Mrs. Browning, +interesting throughout, but of which only the second part +is quite suited for present insertion. + +Mrs. Browning, who writes first and at most length, ends by saying +she must leave a space for Robert, that Mr. Fox may be compensated +for reading all she has had to say. The husband continues as follows: + +== +. . . `A space for Robert' who has taken a breathing space -- +hardly more than enough -- to recover from his delight; he won't say surprise, +at your letter, dear Mr. Fox. But it is all right and, like you, +I wish from my heart we could get close together again, +as in those old days, and what times we would have here in Italy! +The realization of the children's prayer of angels at the corner of your bed +(i.e. sofa), one to read and one (my wife) to write,* and both to guard you +through the night of lodging-keeper's extortions, abominable charges +for firing, and so on. (Observe, to call oneself `an angel' in this land +is rather humble, where they are apt to be painted as plumed cutthroats +or celestial police -- you say of Gabriel at his best and blithesomest, +`Shouldn't admire meeting HIM in a narrow lane!') + +-- +* Mr. Fox much liked to be read to, and was in the habit + of writing his articles by dictation. +-- + +I say this foolishly just because I can't trust myself to be earnest about it. +I would, you know, I would, always would, choose you +out of the whole English world to judge and correct what I write myself; +my wife shall read this and let it stand if I have told her so +these twelve years -- and certainly I have not grown intellectually an inch +over the good and kind hand you extended over my head how many years ago! +Now it goes over my wife's too. + +How was it Tottie never came here as she promised? Is it to be +some other time? Do think of Florence, if ever you feel chilly, +and hear quantities about the Princess Royal's marriage, and want a change. +I hate the thought of leaving Italy for one day more than I can help -- +and satisfy my English predilections by newspapers and a book or two. +One gets nothing of that kind here, but the stuff out of which books grow, -- +it lies about one's feet indeed. Yet for me, there would be +one book better than any now to be got here or elsewhere, +and all out of a great English head and heart, -- those `Memoirs' +you engaged to give us. Will you give us them? + +Goodbye now -- if ever the whim strikes you to `make beggars happy' +remember us. + +Love to Tottie, and love and gratitude to you, dear Mr. Fox, + From yours ever affectionately, + Robert Browning. +== + +In the summer of this year, the poet with his wife and child +joined his father and sister at Havre. It was the last time +they were all to be together. + + + + +Chapter 13 + +1858-1861 + + Mrs. Browning's Illness -- Siena -- Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Leighton + -- Mrs. Browning's Letters continued -- Walter Savage Landor -- + Winter in Rome -- Mr. Val Prinsep -- Friends in Rome: + Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright -- Multiplying Social Relations -- Massimo d'Azeglio + -- Siena again -- Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister -- + Mr. Browning's Occupations -- Madame du Quaire -- + Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death. + + + +I cannot quite ascertain, though it might seem easy to do so, +whether Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in Florence again +till the summer of 1859, or whether the intervening months were divided +between Florence and Rome; but some words in their letters +favour the latter supposition. We hear of them in September +from Mr. Val Prinsep, in Siena or its neighbourhood; with Mr. and Mrs. Story +in an adjacent villa, and Walter Savage Landor in a `cottage' close by. +How Mr. Landor found himself of the party belongs to a little chapter +in Mr. Browning's history for which I quote Mr. Colvin's words.* +He was then living at Fiesole with his family, very unhappily, as we all know; +and Mr. Colvin relates how he had thrice left his villa there, +determined to live in Florence alone; and each time been brought back +to the nominal home where so little kindness awaited him. + +-- +* `Life of Landor', p. 209. +-- + +== +`. . . The fourth time he presented himself in the house of Mr. Browning +with only a few pauls in his pocket, declaring that nothing should ever +induce him to return. + +`Mr. Browning, an interview with the family at the villa having satisfied him +that reconciliation or return was indeed past question, put himself at once +in communication with Mr. Forster and with Landor's brothers in England. +The latter instantly undertook to supply the needs of their eldest brother +during the remainder of his life. Thenceforth an income +sufficient for his frugal wants was forwarded regularly for his use +through the friend who had thus come forward at his need. To Mr. Browning's +respectful and judicious guidance Landor showed himself docile from the first. +Removed from the inflictions, real and imaginary, of his life at Fiesole, +he became another man, and at times still seemed to those about him like +the old Landor at his best. It was in July, 1859, that the new arrangements +for his life were made. The remainder of that summer he spent at Siena, +first as the guest of Mr. Story, the American sculptor and poet, +next in a cottage rented for him by Mr. Browning near his own. +In the autumn of the same year Landor removed to a set of apartments +in the Via Nunziatina in Florence, close to the Casa Guidi, +in a house kept by a former servant of Mrs. Browning's, +an Englishwoman married to an Italian.* Here he continued to live +during the five years that yet remained to him.' + +-- +* Wilson, Mrs. Browning's devoted maid, and another most faithful servant + of hers and her husband's, Ferdinando Romagnoli. +-- + +Mr. Landor's presence is also referred to, with the more important +circumstance of a recent illness of Mrs. Browning's, +in two characteristic and interesting letters of this period, +one written by Mr. Browning to Frederic Leighton, the other by his wife +to her sister-in-law. Mr. -- now Sir F. -- Leighton had been studying art +during the previous winter in Italy. + +== + Kingdom of Piedmont, Siena: Oct. 9, '59. + +`My dear Leighton -- I hope -- and think -- you know what delight it gave me +to hear from you two months ago. I was in great trouble at the time +about my wife who was seriously ill. As soon as she could bear removal +we brought her to a villa here. She slowly recovered and is at last WELL +-- I believe -- but weak still and requiring more attention than usual. +We shall be obliged to return to Rome for the winter -- +not choosing to risk losing what we have regained with some difficulty. +Now you know why I did not write at once -- and may imagine why, +having waited so long, I put off telling you for a week or two +till I could say certainly what we do with ourselves. +If any amount of endeavour could induce you to join us there -- +Cartwright, Russell, the Vatican and all -- and if such a step +were not inconsistent with your true interests -- you should have it: +but I know very well that you love Italy too much not to have had +weighty reasons for renouncing her at present -- and I want your own good +and not my own contentment in the matter. Wherever you are, +be sure I shall follow your proceedings with deep and true interest. +I heard of your successes -- and am now anxious to know how you get on +with the great picture, the `Ex voto' -- if it does not prove +full of beauty and power, two of us will be shamed, that's all! +But _I_ don't fear, mind! Do keep me informed of your progress, +from time to time -- a few lines will serve -- and then I shall slip some day +into your studio, and buffet the piano, without having grown a stranger. +Another thing -- do take proper care of your health, and exercise yourself; +give those vile indigestions no chance against you; keep up your spirits, +and be as distinguished and happy as God meant you should. +Can I do anything for you at Rome -- not to say, Florence? +We go thither (i.e. to Florence) to-morrow, stay there a month, probably, +and then take the Siena road again.' +== + +The next paragraph refers to some orders for photographs, +and is not specially interesting. + +== +Cartwright arrived here a fortnight ago -- very pleasant it was to see him: +he left for Florence, stayed a day or two and returned to Mrs. Cartwright +(who remained at the Inn) and they all departed prosperously yesterday +for Rome. Odo Russell spent two days here on his way thither -- +we liked him much. Prinsep and Jones -- do you know them? -- are in the town. +The Storys have passed the summer in the villa opposite, -- +and no less a lion than dear old Landor is in a house a few steps off. +I take care of him -- his amiable family having clawed him +a little too sharply: so strangely do things come about! +I mean his Fiesole `family' -- a trifle of wife, sons and daughter -- +not his English relatives, who are generous and good in every way. + +Take any opportunity of telling dear Mrs. Sartoris (however unnecessarily) +that I and my wife remember her with the old feeling -- I trust she is well +and happy to heart's content. Pen is quite well and rejoicing just now +in a Sardinian pony on which he gallops like Puck on a dragon-fly's back. +My wife's kind regard and best wishes go with those of, + Dear Leighton, yours affectionately ever, + R. Browning. +== + +== + October 1859. + +Mrs. to Miss Browning. + +`. . . After all, it is not a cruel punishment to have to go to Rome again +this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and we did wish +to keep quiet this winter, -- the taste for constant wanderings +having passed away as much for me as for Robert. We begin to see +that by no possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end -- +and then we don't work so well, don't live to as much use +either for ourselves or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend +to live at Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, +what with going away for the summer and going away for the winter. +It's too true. It's the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there +is impossible for us, almost just as to live out of Italy at all, +is impossible for us. It isn't caprice on our part. Siena pleases us +very much -- the silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, +and the country is very pretty -- though no more than pretty -- +nothing marked or romantic -- no mountains, except so far off +as to be like a cloud only on clear days -- and no water. +Pretty dimpled ground, covered with low vineyards, purple hills, not high, +with the sunsets clothing them. . . . We shall not leave Florence +till November -- Robert must see Mr. Landor (his adopted son, Sarianna) +settled in his new apartments with Wilson for a duenna. +It's an excellent plan for him and not a bad one for Wilson. . . . +Forgive me if Robert has told you this already. Dear darling Robert +amuses me by talking of his "gentleness and sweetness". +A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, +and very affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), +but of self-restraint, he has not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. +Wilson will run many risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. +What do you say to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like +what's on it? And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now +have been already accused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion +(though there was talk of the probability of Mr. Landor's "throat being cut +in his sleep" --) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him -- +and the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, +to beguile the time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. +He laughs carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days +he will have to write an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me.' +== + +Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome: + +== +`. . . We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment +before it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look-out +into a little garden, quiet and cheerful, and he doesn't mind a situation +rather out of the way. He pays four pounds ten (English) the month. +Wilson has thirty pounds a year for taking care of him -- which sounds +a good deal, but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, +affectionate impulses -- but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. +Nothing coheres in him -- either in his opinions, or, I fear, his affections. +It isn't age -- he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. +Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, +and I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. +Robert always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor +than to any contemporary. At present Landor is very fond of him -- +but I am quite prepared for his turning against us as he has turned +against Forster, who has been so devoted for years and years. +Only one isn't kind for what one gets by it, or there wouldn't be +much kindness in this world. . . .' +== + +Mr. Browning always declared that his wife could impute evil to no one, +that she was a living denial of that doctrine of original sin +to which her Christianity pledged her; and the great breadth +and perfect charity of her views habitually justified the assertion; +but she evidently possessed a keen insight into character, +which made her complete suspension of judgment on the subject of Spiritualism +very difficult to understand. + +The spiritualistic coterie had found a satisfactory way +of explaining Mr. Browning's antagonistic attitude towards it. +He was jealous, it was said, because the Spirits on one occasion +had dropped a crown on to his wife's head and none on to his own. +The first instalment of his long answer to this grotesque accusation +appears in a letter of Mrs. Browning's, probably written +in the course of the winter of 1859-60. + +== +`. . . My brother George sent me a number of the "National Magazine" +with my face in it, after Marshall Wood's medallion. My comfort is that +my greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not go far +with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have its due weight +in arresting the sale of "Aurora Leigh" from henceforth. +You never saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman +with the neck of a vicious bull. . . . Still, I am surprised, I own, +at the amount of success, and that golden-hearted Robert +is in ecstasies about it, far more than if it all related +to a book of his own. The form of the story, and also, +something in the philosophy, seem to have caught the crowd. +As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. +I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . +Give Peni's and my love to the dearest `nonno' (grandfather) +whose sublime unselfishness and want of common egotism +presents such a contrast to what is here. Tell him I often think of him, +and always with touched feeling. (When HE is eighty-six or ninety-six, +nobody will be pained or humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love +resulting from a long life's ungoverned will.) May God bless him! -- +. . . Robert has made his third bust copied from the antique. +He breaks them all up as they are finished -- it's only matter of education. +When the power of execution is achieved, he will try at something original. +Then reading hurts him; as long as I have known him he has not been able +to read long at a time -- he can do it now better than at the beginning. +The consequence of which is that an active occupation is salvation to him. +. . . Nobody exactly understands him except me, who am in the inside of him +and hear him breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, +that he thinks aloud with me and can't stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems +done this winter very much, and here was a bright room with three windows +consecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and did nothing. +Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours together -- +there has been little poetry done since last winter, when he did much. +He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling combines +body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and the more +his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been happy. +So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture -- +I couldn't in fact at all. He has material for a volume, +and will work at it this summer, he says. + +`His power is much in advance of "Strafford", which is +his poorest work of art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, +even in the pauses of the pen. + +`At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, +and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public -- no other word. +He says he has told you some things you had not heard, +and which I acknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. +I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) +that an English lady of rank, an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, +the other day, the American minister, whether "Robert was not an American." +The minister answered -- "is it possible that YOU ask me this? +Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States, +where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, +and that they were sorry he was not an American." Very pretty +of the American minister, was it not? -- and literally true, besides. . . . +Ah, dear Sarianna -- I don't complain for myself of an unappreciating public. +I HAVE NO REASON. But, just for THAT reason, I complain more about Robert +-- only he does not hear me complain -- to YOU I may say, +that the blindness, deafness and stupidity of the English public to Robert +are amazing. Of course Milsand had heard his name -- well the contrary +would have been strange. Robert IS. All England can't prevent his existence, +I suppose. But nobody there, except a small knot of pre-Raffaellite men, +pretend to do him justice. Mr. Forster has done the best, -- in the press. +As a sort of lion, Robert has his range in society -- and -- for the rest, +you should see Chapman's returns! -- While, in America he is a power, +a writer, a poet -- he is read -- he lives in the hearts of the people. + +`"Browning readings" here in Boston -- "Browning evenings" there. +For the rest, the English hunt lions, too, Sarianna, but their lions +are chiefly chosen among lords and railway kings. . . .' +== + +We cannot be surprised at Mrs. Browning's desire for +a more sustained literary activity on her husband's part. +We learn from his own subsequent correspondence that he too +regarded the persevering exercise of his poetic faculty +as almost a religious obligation. But it becomes the more apparent +that the restlessness under which he was now labouring was its own excuse; +and that its causes can have been no mystery even to those `outside' him. +The life and climate of Italy were beginning to undermine his strength. +We owe it perhaps to the great and sorrowful change, +which was then drawing near, that the full power of work returned to him. + +During the winter of 1859-60, Mr. Val Prinsep was in Rome. +He had gone to Siena with Mr. Burne Jones, bearing an introduction +from Rossetti to Mr. Browning and his wife; and the acquaintance with them +was renewed in the ensuing months. Mr. Prinsep had acquired +much knowledge of the popular, hence picturesque aspects of Roman life, +through a French artist long resident in the city; and by the help +of the two young men Mr. Browning was also introduced to them. +The assertion that during his married life he never dined away from home +must be so far modified, that he sometimes joined Mr. Prinsep and his friend +in a Bohemian meal, at an inn near the Porta Pinciana +which they much frequented; and he gained in this manner +some distinctive experiences which he liked long afterwards to recall. +I am again indebted to Mr. Prinsep for a description of some of these. + +== +`The first time he honoured us was on an evening when +the poet of the quarter of the "Monte" had announced his intention +of coming to challenge a rival poet to a poetical contest. +Such contests are, or were, common in Rome. In old times +the Monte and the Trastevere, the two great quarters of the eternal city, +held their meetings on the Ponte Rotto. The contests were not confined +to the effusions of the poetical muse. Sometimes it was a strife +between two lute-players, sometimes guitarists would engage, +and sometimes mere wrestlers. The rivalry was so keen +that the adverse parties finished up with a general fight. +So the Papal Government had forbidden the meetings on the old bridge. +But still each quarter had its pet champions, who were wont to meet in private +before an appreciative, but less excitable audience, than in olden times. + +`Gigi (the host) had furnished a first-rate dinner, +and his usual tap of excellent wine. (`Vino del Popolo' he called it.) +The `Osteria' had filled; the combatants were placed opposite each other +on either side of a small table on which stood two `mezzi' -- +long glass bottles holding about a quart apiece. For a moment +the two poets eyed each other like two cocks seeking an opportunity to engage. +Then through the crowd a stalwart carpenter, a constant attendant of Gigi's, +elbowed his way. He leaned over the table with a hand on each shoulder, +and in a neatly turned couplet he then addressed the rival bards. + +`"You two," he said, "for the honour of Rome, must do your best, +for there is now listening to you a great Poet from England." + +`Having said this, he bowed to Browning, and swaggered back +to his place in the crowd, amid the applause of the on-lookers. + +`It is not necessary to recount how the two Improvisatori poetized, +even if I remembered, which I do not. + +`On another occasion, when Browning and Story were dining with us, +we had a little orchestra (mandolins, two guitars, and a lute,) to play to us. +The music consisted chiefly of well-known popular airs. +While they were playing with great fervour the Hymn to Garibaldi -- +an air strictly forbidden by the Papal Government, three blows at the door +resounded through the `Osteria'. The music stopped in a moment. +I saw Gigi was very pale as he walked down the room. There was a short parley +at the door. It opened, and a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes +marched solemnly up to the counter from which drink was supplied. +There was a dead silence while Gigi supplied them with +large measures of wine, which the gendarmes leisurely imbibed. +Then as solemnly they marched out again, with their heads well in the air, +looking neither to the right nor the left. Most discreet if not incorruptible +guardians of the peace! When the door was shut the music began again; +but Gigi was so earnest in his protestations, that my friend Browning +suggested we should get into carriages and drive to see the Coliseum +by moonlight. And so we sallied forth, to the great relief of poor Gigi, +to whom it meant, if reported, several months of imprisonment, +and complete ruin. + +`In after-years Browning frequently recounted with delight this night march. + +`"We drove down the Corso in two carriages," he would say. +"In one were our musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people +all asked, `who are these who make all this parade?' At last some one said, +`Without doubt these are the fellows who won the lottery,' +and everybody cried, `Of course these are the lucky men who have won.'"' +== + +The two persons whom Mr. Browning saw most, and most intimately, +during this and the ensuing winter, were probably Mr. and Mrs. Story. +Allusion has already been made to the opening of the acquaintance +at the Baths of Lucca in 1853, to its continuance in Rome in '53 and '54, +and to the artistic pursuits which then brought the two men +into close and frequent contact with each other. These friendly relations +were cemented by their children, who were of about the same age; +and after Mrs. Browning's death, Miss Browning took her place +in the pleasant intercourse which renewed itself whenever +their respective visits to Italy and to England again brought +the two families together. A no less lasting and truly affectionate intimacy +was now also growing up with Mr. Cartwright and his wife -- +the Cartwrights (of Aynhoe) of whom mention was made +in the Siena letter to F. Leighton; and this too was subsequently to include +their daughter, now Mrs. Guy Le Strange, and Mr. Browning's sister. +I cannot quite ascertain when the poet first knew Mr. Odo Russell, +and his mother, Lady William Russell, who was also during this, +or at all events the following winter, in Rome; and whom afterwards in London +he regularly visited until her death; but the acquaintance was already +entering on the stage in which it would spread as a matter of course +through every branch of the family. His first country visit, +when he had returned to England, was paid with his son to Woburn Abbey. + +We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficulties +of Mr. Browning's biography: that of giving a sufficient idea +of the growing extent and growing variety of his social relations. +It is evident from the fragments of his wife's correspondence that during, +as well as after, his married life, he always and everywhere knew everyone +whom it could interest him to know. These acquaintances constantly ripened +into friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They were necessarily +often marked by interesting circumstances or distinctive character. +To follow them one by one, would add not chapters, but volumes, +to our history. The time has not yet come at which this could even +be undertaken; and any attempt at systematic selection would create +a false impression of the whole. I must therefore be still content +to touch upon such passages of Mr. Browning's social experience +as lie in the course of a comparatively brief record; leaving all such +as are not directly included in it to speak indirectly for themselves. + +Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859: + +== +`Massimo d'Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, +with that noble head of his. I was far prouder of his coming +than of another personal distinction you will guess at,* +though I don't pretend to have been insensible to that.' + +-- +* An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company + with the young Prince of Wales. +-- +== + +Dr. -- afterwards Cardinal -- Manning was also among +the distinguished or interesting persons whom they knew in Rome. + +Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or 1860, +when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once more +in contemplation. + +== + Casa Guidi. + +`My dearest Sarianna, -- I am delighted to say that we have arrived, +and see our dear Florence -- the Queen of Italy, after all . . . +A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever +was known to look -- and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his beard . . . +which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, +the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought +to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed -- +let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability +on the morning of his arrival in Rome, from exposure to the sun +or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away +his whole beard . . . whiskers and all!! I CRIED when I saw him, +I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics +and still been reasonable -- for no human being was ever so disfigured +by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered heart and voice, +that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn't let it all +grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) +he yielded the point, -- and the beard grew -- but it grew white -- +which was the just punishment of the gods -- our sins leave their traces. + +`Well, poor darling Robert won't shock you after all -- you can't choose +but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me +that he was not changed for the intermediate years. . . .' +== + +The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, +and from thence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law +of her great anxiety concerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook,* +then attacked by a fatal disease. + +-- +* The name was afterwards changed to Altham. +-- + +== +`. . . There is nothing or little to add to my last account +of my precious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it is -- +be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful temperament, +and I never could go on systematically making the worst of any case. +I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectation of a letter, +which is hard. I fight with it for Robert's sake, +but all the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. +She is confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely. . . . +In fact, I am living from day to day, on the merest crumbs of hope -- +on the daily bread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me +a good deal, and interfered with the advantages of the summer, +but that's the least. Poor Robert's scheme for me of perfect repose +has scarcely been carried out. . . .' +== + +This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, +by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected -- +the second postal delivery which took place every day; +for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment's forgetfulness +in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. +On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable, +because Mr. Browning, by his wife's desire, had telegraphed for news, +begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced +that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom +the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact +in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities, +because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, +and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies +of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion. + +Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. +Mr. Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event +had shortened his wife's life, though it is also possible +that her already lowered vitality increased the dejection into which +it plunged her. Her own casual allusions to the state of her health +had long marked arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told, +though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption +were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859, +which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end. +She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse, +during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome. + +She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning in April, +in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy. + +== +`. . . In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than +when I saw him first, sixteen years ago. . . . I believe people in general +would think the same exactly. As to the modelling -- well, +I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. +But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. +He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to +the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium +which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar +in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him +on this point, for I don't think him right; that is to say, +it would not be right for me . . . But Robert waits for an inclination, +works by fits and starts; he can't do otherwise he says, +and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble. +I yearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present. . . . +You will think Robert looking very well when you see him; +indeed, you may judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, +how I used to forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, +but all artists were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip +does not harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, +and the beard is pointed. . . . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, +it is beautiful, _I_ think, but then I think him all beautiful, +and always. . . .' +== + +Mr. Browning's old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December. +She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her +for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony +was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with her brother; +and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in her sorrow, +and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, +and all that `conquers death'. He little knew how soon +he would need the same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages +from his wife's poems; and when, on one of these occasions, +Madame du Quaire had said, as so many persons now say, that she much preferred +his poetry to hers, he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated +in substance some years afterwards to another friend: `You are wrong -- +quite wrong -- she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. +Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, +and tries to build up something -- he wants to make you see it as he sees it +-- shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, +hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; +and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off a little star -- +that's the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.' + +-- +* Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New Castle. +-- + +Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after +their return to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection +to which she was subject; and a new doctor who was called in +discovered grave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed +to be existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively, +indeed actually, slight; and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning, +dated June 7, confirms what her family and friends have since asserted, +that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow. + +== +`. . . We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or hand +to name `Cavour'. That great soul which meditated and made Italy has gone +to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, +he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend +the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a man!' +== + +Her death was signalized by the appearance -- this time, I am told, +unexpected -- of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earth +as to come into contact with it. + + + + +Chapter 14 + +1861-1863 + + Miss Blagden -- Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton + -- His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies -- Establishment in London -- + Plan of Life -- Letter to Madame du Quaire -- Miss Arabel Barrett -- + Biarritz -- Letters to Miss Blagden -- Conception of `The Ring and the Book' + -- Biographical Indiscretion -- New Edition of his Works -- + Mr. and Mrs. Procter. + + + +The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning +in this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden -- Isa Blagden, +as she was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her +could hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet's life; +but the friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning +brings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. +She was for many years a centre of English society in Florence; +for her genial, hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes +(she wrote one or two novels, I believe not without merit), +secured her the acquaintance of many interesting persons, +some of whom occasionally made her house their home; +and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo +live pleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation +who were permitted to share in them. + +She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, +and induced his father to spend his nights under her roof, +while the last painful duties detained him in Florence. +He at least gave her cause to deny, what has been so often affirmed, +that great griefs are necessarily silent. She always spoke of this period +as her `apocalyptic month', so deeply poetic were the ravings +which alternated with the simple human cry of the desolate heart: +`I want her, I want her!' But the ear which received these utterances +has long been closed in death. The only written outbursts +of Mr. Browning's frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, to his sister, +and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent loss +most naturally invoked them, and who has since thought best, +so far as rested with her, to destroy the letters in which +they were contained. It is enough to know by simple statement +that he then suffered as he did. Life conquers Death for most of us; +whether or not `nature, art, and beauty' assist in the conquest. +It was bound to conquer in Mr. Browning's case: first through +his many-sided vitality; and secondly, through the special motive +for living and striving which remained to him in his son. +This note is struck in two letters which are given me to publish, +written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning's death; +and we see also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow, +and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace +and painlessness of his wife's last moments could afford to him. + +== + Florence: July 19, '61. + +Dear Leighton, -- It is like your old kindness to write to me +and to say what you do -- I know you feel for me. I can't write about it -- +but there were many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day -- +there seemed no pain, and (what she would have felt most) +the knowledge of separation from us was spared her. I find these things +a comfort indeed. + +I shall go away from Italy for many a year -- to Paris, +then London for a day or two just to talk with her sister -- +but if I can see you it will be a great satisfaction. +Don't fancy I am `prostrated', I have enough to do for the boy and myself +in carrying out her wishes. He is better than one would have thought, +and behaves dearly to me. Everybody has been very kind. + +Tell dear Mrs. Sartoris that I know her heart and thank her with all mine. +After my day or two at London I shall go to some quiet place in France +to get right again and then stay some time at Paris +in order to find out leisurely what it will be best to do for Peni -- +but eventually I shall go to England, I suppose. I don't mean +to live with anybody, even my own family, but to occupy myself thoroughly, +seeing dear friends, however, like you. God bless you. + Yours ever affectionately, + Robert Browning. +== + +The second is addressed to Miss Haworth. + +== + Florence: July 20, 1861. + +My dear Friend, -- I well know you feel as you say, +for her once and for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, +will have told you something perhaps -- and one day +I shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much as I can. +The main comfort is that she suffered very little pain, +none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of cold and cough +she was subject to -- had no presentiment of the result whatever, +and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about to leave us; +she was smilingly assuring me she was `better', `quite comfortable -- +if I would but come to bed,' to within a few minutes of the last. I think +I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week's illness +-- but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying fear -- +she said on the last evening `it is merely the old attack, not so severe a one +as that of two years ago -- there is no doubt I shall soon recover,' +and we talked over plans for the summer, and next year. +I sent the servants away and her maid to bed -- so little reason +for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept heavily, +and brokenly -- that was the bad sign -- but then she would sit up, +take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. +At four o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid +and sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, +`Well, you ARE determined to make an exaggerated case of it!' +Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer -- +the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge +of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's -- +and in a few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. +These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones +as their right: there was no lingering, nor acute pain, +nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift +a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy bed into your arms and the light. +Thank God. Annunziata thought by her earnest ways with me, +happy and smiling as they were, that she must have been aware +of our parting's approach -- but she was quite conscious, +had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, +who was in the next room. Her last word was when I asked `How do you feel?' +-- `Beautiful.' You know I have her dearest wishes and interests +to attend to AT ONCE -- her child to care for, educate, establish properly; +and my own life to fulfil as properly, -- all just as she would require +were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years -- +go to London for a few days' talk with Arabel -- then go to my father +and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni -- +but no more `housekeeping' for me, even with my family. +I shall grow, still, I hope -- but my root is taken and remains. + +I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always +be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did. + +She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, +if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. +I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well -- +very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. +He can't know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine -- +he will want what he never had -- that is, for the time +when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety -- +I HAVE had everything and shall not forget. + +God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. +Isa goes with me -- dear, true heart. You, too, would do +what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful. +A letter from you came a day or two before the end -- +she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you, -- +Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151, +rue de Grenelle St. Germain. + Faithfully and affectionately yours, + Robert Browning. +== + +The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought +less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, +I believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men. +His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. +At about the end of July he left Florence with his son; +also accompanied by Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. +She herself must soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her +in September on the subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,* +in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot. + +-- +* Required for the subsequent placing of the monument designed by F. Leighton. +-- + +== + Sept. '61. + +`. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these +dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. +when they are proceeded with, -- will you do -- all you can -- +suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? +I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless +publicity and exposure -- I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, +to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come -- +a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, +or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left +the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, +carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. +I won't think any more of it -- now -- at least. . . .' +== + +The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of +the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects itself +with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, +which was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank, +as his wife had done, from the `earth side' of the portentous change; +but truth compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part +in his attitude towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed, +held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been. +He had no sympathy for the still human tenderness with which +so many of us regard the mortal remains of those they have loved, +or with the solemn or friendly interest in which that tenderness +so often reflects itself in more neutral minds. He would claim +all respect for the corpse, but he would turn away from it. +Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter +to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, +in reference to his wife's monument, with which Mr. Barrett +had professed himself pleased. His tone is characterized +by an almost religious reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines. +He nevertheless writes: + +== +`I hope to see it one day -- and, although I have no kind of concern +as to where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown, +yet, if my fortune be such, and my survivors be not unduly troubled, +I should like them to lie in the place I have retained there. +It is no matter, however.' +== + +The letter is dated October 19, 1866. He never saw Florence again. + +Mr. Browning spent two months with his father and sister at St.-Enogat, +near Dinard, from which place the letter to Miss Blagden was written; +and then proceeded to London, where his wife's sister, Miss Arabel Barrett, +was living. He had declared in his first grief that he would +never keep house again, and he began his solitary life +in lodgings which at his request she had engaged for him; +but the discomfort of this arrangement soon wearied him of it; +and before many months had passed, he had sent to Florence for his furniture, +and settled himself in the house in Warwick Crescent, which possessed, +besides other advantages, that of being close to Delamere Terrace, +where Miss Barrett had taken up her abode. + +This first period of Mr. Browning's widowed life was +one of unutterable dreariness, in which the smallest +and yet most unconquerable element was the prosaic ugliness of everything +which surrounded him. It was fifteen years since he had spent a winter +in England; he had never spent one in London. There had been nothing +to break for him the transition from the stately beauty of Florence +to the impressions and associations of the Harrow and Edgware Roads, +and of Paddington Green. He might have escaped this neighbourhood +by way of Westbourne Terrace; but his walks constantly led him +in an easterly direction; and whether in an unconscious hugging of his chains, +or, as was more probable, from the desire to save time, he would drag +his aching heart and reluctant body through the sordidness or the squalor +of this short cut, rather than seek the pleasanter thoroughfares +which were open to him. Even the prettiness of Warwick Crescent +was neutralized for him by the atmosphere of low or ugly life +which encompassed it on almost every side. His haunting dream +was one day to have done with it all; to have fulfilled his mission +with his son, educated him, launched him in a suitable career, +and to go back to sunshine and beauty again. He learned by degrees +to regard London as a home; as the only fitting centre +for the varied energies which were reviving in him; +to feel pride and pleasure in its increasingly picturesque character. +He even learned to appreciate the outlook from his house -- +that `second from the bridge' of which so curious a presentment +had entered into one of the poems of the `Men and Women'* -- +in spite of the refuse of humanity which would sometimes yell +at the street corner, or fling stones at his plate-glass. +But all this had to come; and it is only fair to admit +that twenty-nine years ago the beauties of which I have spoken +were in great measure to come also. He could not then in any mood +have exclaimed, as he did to a friend two or three years ago: +`Shall we not have a pretty London if things go on in this way?' +They were driving on the Kensington side of Hyde Park. + +-- +* `How it strikes a Contemporary'. +-- + +The paternal duty, which, so much against his inclination, +had established Mr. Browning in England, would in every case +have lain very near to his conscience and to his heart; but it especially +urged itself upon them through the absence of any injunction concerning it +on his wife's part. No farewell words of hers had commended their child +to his father's love and care; and though he may, for the moment, +have imputed this fact to unconsciousness of her approaching death, +his deeper insight soon construed the silence into an expression of trust, +more binding upon him than the most earnest exacted promise could have been. +The growing boy's education occupied a considerable part +of his time and thoughts, for he had determined not to send him to school, +but, as far as possible, himself prepare him for the University. +He must also, in some degree, have supervised his recreations. +He had therefore, for the present, little leisure for social distractions, +and probably at first very little inclination for them. +His plan of life and duty, and the sense of responsibility attendant on it, +had been communicated to Madame du Quaire in a letter +written also from St.-Enogat. + +== + M. Chauvin, St.-Enogat pres Dinard, Ile et Vilaine: Aug. 17, '61. + +Dear Madame du Quaire, -- I got your note on Sunday afternoon, +but found myself unable to call on you as I had been intending to do. +Next morning I left for this place (near St.-Malo, but I give what they say +is the proper address). I want first to beg you to forgive +my withholding so long your little oval mirror -- it is safe in Paris, +and I am vexed at having stupidly forgotten to bring it +when I tried to see you. I shall stay here till the autumn sets in, +then return to Paris for a few days -- the first of which will be the best, +if I can see you in the course of it -- afterward, I settle in London. + +When I meant to pass the winter in Paris, I hoped, the first thing almost, +to be near you -- it now seems to me, however, that the best course +for the Boy is to begin a good English education at once. +I shall take quiet lodgings (somewhere near Kensington Gardens, +I rather think) and get a Tutor. I want, if I can (according to +my present very imperfect knowledge) to get the poor little fellow +fit for the University without passing thro' a Public School. I, myself, +could never have done much by either process, but he is made differently -- +imitates and emulates and all that. How I should be grateful +if you would help me by any word that should occur to you! +I may easily do wrong, begin ill, thro' too much anxiety -- +perhaps, however, all may be easier than seems to me just now. + +I shall have a great comfort in talking to you -- this writing +is stiff, ineffectual work. Pen is very well, cheerful now, -- +has his little horse here. The place is singularly unspoiled, +fresh and picturesque, and lovely to heart's content. +I wish you were here! -- and if you knew exactly what such a wish means, +you would need no assuring in addition that I am + Yours affectionately and gratefully ever + Robert Browning. +== + +The person of whom he saw most was his sister-in-law, whom he visited, +I believe, every evening. Miss Barrett had been a favourite sister +of Mrs. Browning's, and this constituted a sufficient title +to her husband's affection. But she was also a woman to be loved +for her own sake. Deeply religious and very charitable, she devoted herself +to visiting the poor -- a form of philanthropy which was then +neither so widespread nor so fashionable as it has since become; +and she founded, in 1850, the first Training School or Refuge +which had ever existed for destitute little girls. It need hardly be added +that Mr. and Miss Browning co-operated in the work. The little poem, +`The Twins', republished in 1855 in `Men and Women', was first printed +(with Mrs. Browning's `Plea for the Ragged Schools of London') +for the benefit of this Refuge. It was in Miss Barrett's company +that Mr. Browning used to attend the church of Mr. Thomas Jones, +to a volume of whose `Sermons and Addresses' he wrote a short introduction +in 1884. + +On February 15, 1862, he writes again to Miss Blagden. + +== + Feb. 15, '62. + +`. . . While I write, my heart is sore for a great calamity +just befallen poor Rossetti, which I only heard of last night -- +his wife, who had been, as an invalid, in the habit of taking laudanum, +swallowed an overdose -- was found by the poor fellow on his return +from the working-men's class in the evening, under the effects of it -- +help was called in, the stomach-pump used; but she died in the night, +about a week ago. There has hardly been a day when I have not thought, +"if I can, to-morrow, I will go and see him, and thank him for his book, +and return his sister's poems." Poor, dear fellow! . . . + +`. . . Have I not written a long letter, for me who hate the sight +of a pen now, and see a pile of unanswered things on the table before me? +-- on this very table. Do you tell me in turn all about yourself. +I shall be interested in the minutest thing you put down. +What sort of weather is it? You cannot but be better at your new villa than +in the large solitary one. There I am again, going up the winding way to it, +and seeing the herbs in red flower, and the butterflies on the top of the wall +under the olive-trees! Once more, good-bye. . . .' +== + +The hatred of writing of which he here speaks refers probably +to the class of letters which he had lately been called upon to answer, +and which must have been painful in proportion to the kindness +by which they were inspired. But it returned to him many years later, +in simple weariness of the mental and mechanical act, and with such force +that he would often answer an unimportant note in person, +rather than make the seemingly much smaller exertion of doing so with his pen. +It was the more remarkable that, with the rarest exceptions, +he replied to every letter which came to him. + +The late summer of the former year had been entirely unrefreshing, +in spite of his acknowledgment of the charms of St.-Enogat. +There was more distraction and more soothing in the stay +at Cambo and Biarritz, which was chosen for the holiday of 1862. +Years afterwards, when the thought of Italy carried with it less longing +and even more pain, Mr. Browning would speak of a visit to the Pyrenees, +if not a residence among them, as one of the restful possibilities +of his later and freer life. He wrote to Miss Blagden: + +== + Biarritz, Maison Gastonbide: Sept. 19, '62. + +`. . . I stayed a month at green pleasant little Cambo, +and then came here from pure inability to go elsewhere -- +St.-Jean de Luz, on which I had reckoned, being still fuller of Spaniards +who profit by the new railway. This place is crammed with gay people +of whom I see nothing but their outsides. The sea, sands, +and view of the Spanish coast and mountains, are superb +and this house is on the town's outskirts. I stay till the end of the month, +then go to Paris, and then get my neck back into the old collar again. +Pen has managed to get more enjoyment out of his holiday +than seemed at first likely -- there was a nice French family at Cambo +with whom he fraternised, riding with the son and escorting the daughter +in her walks. His red cheeks look as they should. For me, I have got on +by having a great read at Euripides -- the one book I brought with me, +besides attending to my own matters, my new poem that is about to be; +and of which the whole is pretty well in my head, -- +the Roman murder story you know. + +`. . . How I yearn, yearn for Italy at the close of my life! . . .' +== + +The `Roman murder story' was, I need hardly say, to become +`The Ring and the Book'. + +It has often been told, though with curious confusion as regards the date, +how Mr. Browning picked up the original parchment-bound record +of the Franceschini case, on a stall of the Piazza San Lorenzo. +We read in the first section of his own work that he plunged instantly +into the study of this record; that he had mastered it by the end of the day; +and that he then stepped out on to the terrace of his house +amid the sultry blackness and silent lightnings of the June night, +as the adjacent church of San Felice sent forth its chants, +and voices buzzed in the street below, -- and saw the tragedy +as a living picture unfold itself before him. These were his last days +at Casa Guidi. It was four years before he definitely began the work. +The idea of converting the story into a poem cannot even have occurred to him +for some little time, since he offered it for prose treatment to Miss Ogle, +the author of `A Lost Love'; and for poetic use, I am almost certain, +to one of his leading contemporaries. It was this slow process of incubation +which gave so much force and distinctness to his ultimate presentment +of the characters; though it infused a large measure of personal imagination, +and, as we shall see, of personal reminiscence, into their historical truth. + +Before `The Ring and the Book' was actually begun, +`Dramatis Personae' and `In a Balcony' were to be completed. +Their production had been delayed during Mrs. Browning's lifetime, +and necessarily interrupted by her death; but we hear of the work +as progressing steadily during this summer of 1862. + +A painful subject of correspondence had been also for some time +engaging Mr. Browning's thoughts and pen. A letter to Miss Blagden +written January 19, '63, is so expressive of his continued attitude +towards the questions involved that, in spite of its strong language, +his family advise its publication. The name of the person referred to +will alone be omitted. + +== +`. . . Ever since I set foot in England I have been pestered +with applications for leave to write the Life of my wife -- I have refused -- +and there an end. I have last week received two communications from friends, +enclosing the letters of a certain . . . of . . ., asking them +for details of life and letters, for a biography he is engaged in -- +adding, that he "has secured the correspondence with her old friend . . ." +Think of this beast working away at this, not deeming my feelings +or those of her family worthy of notice -- and meaning to print letters +written years and years ago, on the most intimate and personal subjects +to an "old friend" -- which, at the poor . . . [friend's] death +fell into the hands of a complete stranger, who, at once wanted to print them, +but desisted through Ba's earnest expostulation enforced by my own threat +to take law proceedings -- as fortunately letters are copyright. +I find this woman died last year, and her son writes to me this morning +that . . . got them from him as autographs merely -- he will try +and get them back. . . ., evidently a blackguard, got my letter, +which gave him his deserts, on Saturday -- no answer yet, -- if none comes, +I shall be forced to advertise in the `Times', and obtain an injunction. +But what I suffer in feeling the hands of these blackguards (for I forgot +to say another man has been making similar applications to friends) +what I undergo with their paws in my very bowels, you can guess, +and God knows! No friend, of course, would ever give up the letters -- +if anybody ever is forced to do that which SHE would have writhed under -- +if it ever WERE necessary, why, _I_ should be forced to do it, +and, with any good to her memory and fame, my own pain in the attempt +would be turned into joy -- I should DO it at whatever cost: +but it is not only unnecessary but absurdly useless -- and, indeed, +it shall not be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along with his breath. + +`I am going to reprint the Greek Christian Poets and another essay -- +nothing that ought to be published shall be kept back, -- and this +she certainly intended to correct, augment, and re-produce -- but _I_ open +the doubled-up paper! Warn anyone you may think needs the warning +of the utter distress in which I should be placed were this scoundrel, +or any other of the sort, to baffle me and bring out the letters -- +I can't prevent fools from uttering their folly upon her life, +as they do on every other subject, but the law protects property, -- +as these letters are. Only last week, or so, the Bishop of Exeter +stopped the publication of an announced "Life" -- containing extracts +from his correspondence -- and so I shall do. . . .' +== + +Mr. Browning only resented the exactions of modern biography +in the same degree as most other right-minded persons; but there was, +to his thinking, something specially ungenerous in dragging to light +any immature or unconsidered utterance which the writer's later judgment +would have disclaimed. Early work was always for him +included in this category; and here it was possible to disagree with him; +since the promise of genius has a legitimate interest +from which no distance from its subsequent fulfilment can detract. +But there could be no disagreement as to the rights and decencies involved +in the present case; and, as we hear no more of the letters to Mr. . . ., +we may perhaps assume that their intending publisher was acting in ignorance, +but did not wish to act in defiance, of Mr. Browning's feeling in the matter. + +In the course of this year, 1863, Mr. Browning brought out, +through Chapman and Hall, the still well-known and well-loved +three-volume edition of his works, including `Sordello', +but again excluding `Pauline'. A selection of his poems which appeared +somewhat earlier, if we may judge by the preface, dated November 1862, +deserves mention as a tribute to friendship. The volume had been prepared +by John Forster and Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), `two friends,' +as the preface states, `who from the first appearance of `Paracelsus' +have regarded its writer as among the few great poets of the century.' +Mr. Browning had long before signalized his feeling for Barry Cornwall +by the dedication of `Colombe's Birthday'. He discharged +the present debt to Mr. Procter, if such there was, by the attentions +which he rendered to his infirm old age. For many years he visited him +every Sunday, in spite of a deafness ultimately so complete +that it was only possible to converse with him in writing. +These visits were afterwards, at her urgent request, +continued to Mr. Procter's widow. + + + + +Chapter 15 + +1863-1869 + + Pornic -- `James Lee's Wife' -- Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's -- + Letters to Miss Blagden -- His own Estimate of his Work -- + His Father's Illness and Death; Miss Browning -- Le Croisic -- + Academic Honours; Letter to the Master of Balliol -- + Death of Miss Barrett -- Audierne -- Uniform Edition of his Works -- + His rising Fame -- `Dramatis Personae' -- `The Ring and the Book'; + Character of Pompilia. + + + +The most constant contributions to Mr. Browning's history +are supplied during the next eight or nine years by extracts from his letters +to Miss Blagden. Our next will be dated from Ste.-Marie, near Pornic, +where he and his family again spent their holiday in 1864 and 1865. +Some idea of the life he led there is given at the close of a letter +to Frederic Leighton, August 17, 1863, in which he says: + +== +`I live upon milk and fruit, bathe daily, do a good morning's work, +read a little with Pen and somewhat more by myself, go to bed early, +and get up earlyish -- rather liking it all.' +== + +This mention of a diet of milk and fruit recalls a favourite habit +of Mr. Browning's: that of almost renouncing animal food +whenever he went abroad. It was partly promoted by the inferior quality +of foreign meat, and showed no sign of specially agreeing with him, +at all events in his later years, when he habitually returned to England +looking thinner and more haggard than before he left it. +But the change was always congenial to his taste. + +A fuller picture of these simple, peaceful, and poetic Pornic days +comes to us through Miss Blagden, August 18: + +== +`. . . This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like that village +where we stayed last year. Close to the sea -- a hamlet of a dozen houses, +perfectly lonely -- one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by the sea +for miles. Our house is the Mayor's, large enough, clean and bare. +If I could, I would stay just as I am for many a day. +I feel out of the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window; +with the little church, a field, a few houses, and the sea. +On a weekday there is nobody in the village, plenty of hay-stacks, +cows and fowls; all our butter, eggs, milk, are produced in the farm-house. +Such a soft sea, and such a mournful wind! + +`I wrote a poem yesterday of 120 lines, and mean to keep writing +whether I like it or not. . . .' +== + +That `window' was the `Doorway' in `James Lee's Wife'. +The sea, the field, and the fig-tree were visible from it. + +A long interval in the correspondence, at all events +so far as we are concerned, carries us to the December of 1864, +and then Mr. Browning wrote: + +== +`. . . on the other hand, I feel such comfort and delight +in doing the best I can with my own object of life, poetry -- +which, I think, I never could have seen the good of before, +that it shows me I have taken the root I DID take, WELL. +I hope to do much more yet -- and that the flower of it +will be put into Her hand somehow. I really have great opportunities +and advantages -- on the whole, almost unprecedented ones -- I think, +no other disturbances and cares than those I am most grateful +for being allowed to have. . . .' +== + +One of our very few written reminiscences of Mr. Browning's social life +refers to this year, 1864, and to the evening, February 12, +on which he signed his will in the presence of Mr. Francis Palgrave +and Alfred Tennyson. It is inscribed in the diary of Mr. Thomas Richmond, +then chaplain to St. George's Hospital; and Mr. Reginald Palgrave +has kindly procured me a copy of it. A brilliant party had met at dinner +at the house of Mr. F. Palgrave, York Gate, Regent's Park; +Mr. Richmond, having fulfilled a prior engagement, had joined it later. +`There were, in order,' he says, `round the dinner-table (dinner being over), +Gifford Palgrave, Tennyson, Dr. John Ogle, Sir Francis H. Doyle, +Frank Palgrave, W. E. Gladstone, Browning, Sir John Simeon, +Monsignor Patterson, Woolner, and Reginald Palgrave.' + +Mr. Richmond closes his entry by saying he will never forget that evening. +The names of those whom it had brought together, almost all to be +sooner or later numbered among the Poet's friends, were indeed enough +to stamp it as worthy of recollection. One or two characteristic +utterances of Mr. Browning are, however, the only ones +which it seems advisable to repeat here. The conversation having turned +on the celebration of the Shakespeare ter-centenary, he said: +`Here we are called upon to acknowledge Shakespeare, we who have him +in our very bones and blood, our very selves. The very recognition +of Shakespeare's merits by the Committee reminds me of nothing +so apt as an illustration, as the decree of the Directoire +that men might acknowledge God.' + +Among the subjects discussed was the advisability of making schoolboys write +English verses as well as Latin and Greek. `Woolner and Sir Francis Doyle +were for this; Gladstone and Browning against it.' + +Work had now found its fitting place in the Poet's life. +It was no longer the overflow of an irresistible productive energy; +it was the deliberate direction of that energy towards an appointed end. +We hear something of his own feeling concerning this +in a letter of August '65, again from Ste.-Marie, and called forth +by some gossip concerning him which Miss Blagden had connected +with his then growing fame. + +== +`. . . I suppose that what you call "my fame within these four years" +comes from a little of this gossiping and going about, +and showing myself to be alive: and so indeed some folks say -- +but I hardly think it: for remember I was uninterruptedly (almost) in London +from the time I published `Paracelsus' till I ended that string of plays +with `Luria' -- and I used to go out then, and see far more +of merely literary people, critics &c. than I do now, -- but what came of it? +There were always a few people who had a certain opinion of my poems, +but nobody cared to speak what he thought, or the things printed +twenty-five years ago would not have waited so long for a good word; +but at last a new set of men arrive who don't mind the conventionalities +of ignoring one and seeing everything in another -- Chapman says, +"the new orders come from Oxford and Cambridge," and all my new cultivators +are young men -- more than that, I observe that some of my old friends +don't like at all the irruption of outsiders who rescue me from +their sober and private approval, and take those words out of their mouths +"which they always meant to say" and never did. When there gets to be +a general feeling of this kind, that there must be something +in the works of an author, the reviews are obliged to notice him, +such notice as it is -- but what poor work, even when doing its best! +I mean poor in the failure to give a general notion of the whole works; +not a particular one of such and such points therein. +As I begun, so I shall end, -- taking my own course, +pleasing myself or aiming at doing so, and thereby, I hope, pleasing God. + +`As I never did otherwise, I never had any fear as to what I did +going ultimately to the bad, -- hence in collected editions +I always reprinted everything, smallest and greatest. Do you ever see, +by the way, the numbers of the selection which Moxons publish? +They are exclusively poems omitted in that other selection by Forster; +it seems little use sending them to you, but when they are completed, +if they give me a few copies, you shall have one if you like. +Just before I left London, Macmillan was anxious to print a third selection, +for his Golden Treasury, which should of course be different from either -- +but THREE seem too absurd. There -- enough of me -- + +`I certainly will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self before I die; +for one reason, that I may help old Pen the better; I was much struck +by the kind ways, and interest shown in me by the Oxford undergraduates, -- +those introduced to me by Jowett. -- I am sure they would be the more helpful +to my son. So, good luck to my great venture, the murder-poem, +which I do hope will strike you and all good lovers of mine. . . .' +== + +We cannot wonder at the touch of bitterness with which Mr. Browning dwells +on the long neglect which he had sustained; but it is at first sight +difficult to reconcile this high positive estimate of the value of his poetry +with the relative depreciation of his own poetic genius which constantly marks +his attitude towards that of his wife. The facts are, however, +quite compatible. He regarded Mrs. Browning's genius as greater, +because more spontaneous, than his own: owing less to life +and its opportunities; but he judged his own work as the more important, +because of the larger knowledge of life which had entered into its production. +He was wrong in the first terms of his comparison: for he underrated +the creative, hence spontaneous element in his own nature, +while claiming primarily the position of an observant thinker; +and he overrated the amount of creativeness implied by the poetry of his wife. +He failed to see that, given her intellectual endowments, and the lyric gift, +the characteristics of her genius were due to circumstances as much as +those of his own. Actual life is not the only source of poetic inspiration, +though it may perhaps be the best. Mrs. Browning as a poet +became what she was, not in spite of her long seclusion, but by help of it. +A touching paragraph, bearing upon this subject, is dated October '65. + +== +`. . . Another thing. I have just been making a selection of Ba's poems +which is wanted -- how I have done it, I can hardly say -- +it is one dear delight to know that the work of her goes on +more effectually than ever -- her books are more and more read -- +certainly, sold. A new edition of Aurora Leigh is completely exhausted +within this year. . . .' +== + +Of the thing next dearest to his memory, his Florentine home, +he had written in the January of this year: + +== +`. . . Yes, Florence will never be MY Florence again. +To build over or beside Poggio seems barbarous and inexcusable. +The Fiesole side don't matter. Are they going to pull the old walls down, +or any part of them, I want to know? Why can't they keep the old city +as a nucleus and build round and round it, as many rings of houses +as they please, -- framing the picture as deeply as they please? +Is Casa Guidi to be turned into any Public Office? I should think that +its natural destination. If I am at liberty to flee away one day, +it will not be to Florence, I dare say. As old Philipson said to me once +of Jerusalem -- "No, I don't want to go there, -- I can see it in my head." +. . . Well, goodbye, dearest Isa. I have been for a few minutes -- nay, +a good many, -- so really with you in Florence that it would be no wonder +if you heard my steps up the lane to your house. . . .' +== + +Part of a letter written in the September of '65 from Ste.-Marie +may be interesting as referring to the legend of Pornic +included in `Dramatis Personae'. + +== +`. . . I suppose my "poem" which you say brings me and Pornic +together in your mind, is the one about the poor girl -- if so, +"fancy" (as I hear you say) they have pulled down the church +since I arrived last month -- there are only the shell-like, +roofless walls left, for a few weeks more; it was very old -- +built on a natural base of rock -- small enough, to be sure -- +so they build a smart new one behind it, and down goes this; +just as if they could not have pitched down their brick and stucco +farther away, and left the old place for the fishermen -- so here -- +the church is even more picturesque -- and certain old Norman ornaments, +capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in the doorway, +are at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the road-side. +The people here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch +of the sense of picturesqueness in their clodpolls. . . .' +== + +The little record continues through 1866. + +== + Feb. 19, '66. + +`. . . I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much +as a dinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, +is staying in town for a few weeks, -- and she is just what she was +and always will be -- very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. +I met him at a large party on Saturday -- also Carlyle, whom I never met +at a "drum" before. . . . Pen is drawing our owl -- a bird that is +the light of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways. . . .' +== + +== + May 19, '66. + +`. . . My father has been unwell, -- he is better and will go +into the country the moment the east winds allow, -- for in Paris, +-- as here, -- there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of sunshine. +I hope to hear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: +he is eighty-five, almost, -- you see! otherwise his wonderful constitution +would keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is absolutely +as I always remember it, -- and the other day when I wanted some information +about a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular bookful +of notes and extracts thereabout. . . .' +== + +== + June 20, '66. + +`My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, +and arrived time enough to pass twenty-four hours more with my father: +he died on the 14th -- quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, +which would have overcome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties +to the last -- was utterly indifferent to death, -- asking with surprise +what it was we were affected about since he was perfectly happy? +-- and kept his own strange sweetness of soul to the end -- +nearly his last words to me, as I was fanning him, were "I am so afraid +that I fatigue you, dear!" this, while his sufferings were great; +for the strength of his constitution seemed impossible to be subdued. +He wanted three weeks exactly to complete his eighty-fifth year. +So passed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, religious man, +whose powers natural and acquired would so easily have made him a notable man, +had he known what vanity or ambition or the love of money +or social influence meant. As it is, he was known by half-a-dozen friends. +He was worthy of being Ba's father -- out of the whole world, only he, +so far as my experience goes. She loved him, -- and HE said, very recently, +while gazing at her portrait, that only that picture had put into his head +that there might be such a thing as the worship of the images of saints. +My sister will come and live with me henceforth. You see what she loses. +All her life has been spent in caring for my mother, and seventeen years +after that, my father. You may be sure she does not rave and rend hair +like people who have plenty to atone for in the past; but she loses very much. +I returned to London last night. . . .' +== + +During his hurried journey to Paris, Mr. Browning was mentally +blessing the Emperor for having abolished the system of passports, +and thus enabled him to reach his father's bedside in time. +His early Italian journeys had brought him some vexatious experience +of the old order of things. Once, at Venice, he had been mistaken +for a well-known Liberal, Dr. Bowring, and found it almost impossible +to get his passport `vise'; and, on another occasion, +it aroused suspicion by being `too good'; though in what sense +I do not quite remember. + +Miss Browning did come to live with her brother, and was thenceforward +his inseparable companion. Her presence with him must therefore be understood +wherever I have had no special reason for mentioning it. + +They tried Dinard for the remainder of the summer; but finding it unsuitable, +proceeded by St.-Malo to Le Croisic, the little sea-side town +of south-eastern Brittany which two of Mr. Browning's poems +have since rendered famous. + +The following extract has no date. + +== + Le Croisic, Loire Inferieure. + +`. . . We all found Dinard unsuitable, and after staying +a few days at St. Malo resolved to try this place, and well for us, +since it serves our purpose capitally. . . . We are in the most delicious +and peculiar old house I ever occupied, the oldest in the town -- +plenty of great rooms -- nearly as much space as in Villa Alberti. +The little town, and surrounding country are wild and primitive, +even a trifle beyond Pornic perhaps. Close by is Batz, +a village where the men dress in white from head to foot, +with baggy breeches, and great black flap hats; -- opposite is Guerande, +the old capital of Bretagne: you have read about it in Balzac's `Beatrix', +-- and other interesting places are near. The sea is all round our peninsula, +and on the whole I expect we shall like it very much. . . .' + + Later. + +`. . . We enjoyed Croisic increasingly to the last -- spite of three weeks' +vile weather, in striking contrast to the golden months at Pornic last year. +I often went to Guerande -- once Sarianna and I walked from it +in two hours and something under, -- nine miles: -- though from our house, +straight over the sands and sea, it is not half the distance. . . .' +== + +In 1867 Mr. Browning received his first and greatest academic honours. +The M.A. degree by diploma, of the University of Oxford, +was conferred on him in June;* and in the month of October +he was made honorary Fellow of Balliol College. Dr. Jowett allows me +to publish the, as he terms it, very characteristic letter in which +he acknowledged the distinction. Dr. Scott, afterwards Dean of Rochester, +was then Master of Balliol. + +-- +* `Not a lower degree than that of D.C.L., but a much higher honour, + hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time except to kings + and royal personages. . . .' So the Keeper of the Archives + wrote to Mr. Browning at the time. +-- + +== + 19, Warwick Crescent: Oct. 21, '67. + +Dear Dr. Scott, -- I am altogether unable to say how I feel as to the fact +you communicate to me. I must know more intimately than you can +how little worthy I am of such an honour, -- you hardly can set +the value of that honour, you who give, as I who take it. + +Indeed, there ARE both `duties and emoluments' attached to this position, -- +duties of deep and lasting gratitude, and emoluments through which +I shall be wealthy my life long. I have at least loved learning +and the learned, and there needed no recognition of my love on their part +to warrant my professing myself, as I do, dear Dr. Scott, +yours ever most faithfully, + Robert Browning. +== + +In the following year he received and declined the virtual offer +of the Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews, +rendered vacant by the death of Mr. J. S. Mill. + +He returned with his sister to Le Croisic for the summer of 1867. + +In June 1868, Miss Arabel Barrett died, of a rheumatic affection of the heart. +As did her sister seven years before, she passed away in Mr. Browning's arms. +He wrote the event to Miss Blagden as soon as it occurred, +describing also a curious circumstance attendant on it. + +== + 19th June, '68. + +`. . . You know I am not superstitious -- here is a note I made in a book, +Tuesday, July 21, 1863. "Arabel told me yesterday that she had been +much agitated by a dream which happened the night before, +Sunday, July 19. She saw Her and asked `when shall I be with you?' +the reply was, `Dearest, in five years,' whereupon Arabella woke. +She knew in her dream that it was not to the living she spoke." +-- In five years, within a month of their completion -- I had forgotten +the date of the dream, and supposed it was only three years ago, +and that two had still to run. Only a coincidence, but noticeable. . . .' +== + +In August he writes again from Audierne, Finisterre (Brittany). + +== +`. . . You never heard of this place, I daresay. After staying a few days +at Paris we started for Rennes, -- reached Caen and halted a little -- +thence made for Auray, where we made excursions to Carnac, +Lokmariaker, and Ste.-Anne d'Auray; all very interesting of their kind; +then saw Brest, Morlaix, St.-Pol de Leon, and the sea-port Roscoff, -- +our intended bathing place -- it was full of folk, however, +and otherwise impracticable, so we had nothing for it, +but to "rebrousser chemin" and get to the south-west again. +At Quimper we heard (for a second time) that Audierne would suit us exactly, +and to it we came -- happily, for "suit" it certainly does. +Look on the map for the most westerly point of Bretagne -- +and of the mainland of Europe -- there is niched Audierne, a delightful +quite unspoiled little fishing-town, with the open ocean in front, +and beautiful woods, hills and dales, meadows and lanes behind and around, -- +sprinkled here and there with villages each with its fine old Church. +Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours' walk +in the course of which we visited a town, Pont Croix, with a beautiful +cathedral-like building amid the cluster of clean bright Breton houses, -- +and a little farther is another church, "Notre Dame de Comfort", +with only a hovel or two round it, worth the journey from England to see; +we are therefore very well off -- at an inn, I should say, with singularly +good, kind, and liberal people, so have no cares for the moment. +May you be doing as well! The weather has been most propitious, +and to-day is perfect to a wish. We bathe, but somewhat ingloriously, +in a smooth creek of mill-pond quietude, (there being no cabins +on the bay itself,) unlike the great rushing waves of Croisic -- +the water is much colder. . . .' +== + +The tribute contained in this letter to the merits of +le Pere Batifoulier and his wife would not, I think, be endorsed +by the few other English travellers who have stayed at their inn. +The writer's own genial and kindly spirit no doubt partly elicited, +and still more supplied, the qualities he saw in them. + +The six-volume, so long known as `uniform' edition of Mr. Browning's works, +was brought out in the autumn of this year by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.; +practically Mr. George Murray Smith, who was to be thenceforward +his exclusive publisher and increasingly valued friend. In the winter months +appeared the first two volumes (to be followed in the ensuing spring +by the third and fourth) of `The Ring and the Book'. + +With `The Ring and the Book' Mr. Browning attained the full recognition +of his genius. The `Athenaeum' spoke of it as the `opus magnum' +of the generation; not merely beyond all parallel the supremest +poetic achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound +spiritual treasure that England had produced since the days of Shakespeare. +His popularity was yet to come, so also the widespread reading +of his hitherto neglected poems; but henceforth whatever he published was +sure of ready acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation. +The ground had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in another letter +to Miss Blagden shows that, when `The Ring and the Book' appeared, +a high place was already awaiting it outside those higher academic circles +in which its author's position was secured. + +== +`. . . I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me +pretty offers for it. One sent to propose, last week, +to publish it at his risk, giving me ALL the profits, +and pay me the whole in advance -- "for the incidental advantages of my name" +-- the R. B. who for six months once did not sell one copy of the poems! +I ask 200 Pounds for the sheets to America, and shall get it. . . .' +== + +His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interest +in his productions; and we may fairly credit `Dramatis Personae' +with having finally awakened his countrymen of all classes +to the fact that a great creative power had arisen among them. +`The Ring and the Book' and `Dramatis Personae' cannot indeed be dissociated +in what was the culminating moment in the author's poetic life, +even more than the zenith of his literary career. In their expression +of all that constituted the wide range and the characteristic quality +of his genius, they at once support and supplement each other. +But a fact of more distinctive biographical interest connects itself +exclusively with the later work. + +We cannot read the emotional passages of `The Ring and the Book' +without hearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning's own: +an echo, not of his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past +must have accompanied him through every stage of the great work. +Its subject had come to him in the last days of his greatest happiness. +It had lived with him, though in the background of consciousness, +through those of his keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime, +in which a subsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation. +He knew the joy with which his wife would have witnessed +the diligent performance of this his self-imposed task. +The beautiful dedication contained in the first and last books +was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence +on this occasion was more than a presiding memory of the heart. +I am convinced that it entered largely into the conception of `Pompilia', +and, so far as this depended on it, the character of the whole work. +In the outward course of her history, Mr. Browning proceeded +strictly on the ground of fact. His dramatic conscience +would not have allowed it otherwise. He had read the record of the case, +as he has been heard to say, fully eight times over before converting it +into the substance of his poem; and the form in which he finally cast it, +was that which recommended itself to him as true -- which, +within certain limits, WAS true. The testimony of those +who watched by Pompilia's death-bed is almost conclusive +as to the absence of any criminal motive to her flight, +or criminal circumstance connected with it. Its time proved itself +to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly expected motherhood, +and may have had some reference to this fact. But the real Pompilia +was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made +repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my memory much deceives me, +her physical condition plays no part in the historical defence of her flight. +If it appeared there at all, it was as a merely practical incentive +to her striving to place herself in safety. The sudden rapturous +sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case, +becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and her culture; +it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is more striking, +it was not a natural development of Mr. Browning's imagination +concerning them. + +The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature -- +a fact which renders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son; +it finds little or no expression in his work. The apotheosis of motherhood +which he puts forth through the aged priest in `Ivan Ivanovitch' +was due to the poetic necessity of lifting a ghastly human punishment +into the sphere of Divine retribution. Even in the advancing years +which soften the father into the grandfather, the essential quality +of early childhood was not that which appealed to him. He would admire +its flower-like beauty, but not linger over it. He had no special emotion +for its helplessness. When he was attracted by a child +it was through the evidence of something not only distinct from, +but opposed to this. `It is the soul' (I see) `in that speck of a body,' +he said, not many years ago, of a tiny boy -- now too big +for it to be desirable that I should mention his name, but whose mother, +if she reads this, will know to whom I allude -- who had delighted him +by an act of intelligent grace which seemed beyond his years. +The ingenuously unbounded maternal pride, the almost luscious +maternal sentiment, of Pompilia's dying moments can only +associate themselves in our mind with Mrs. Browning's personal utterances, +and some notable passages in `Casa Guidi Windows' and `Aurora Leigh'. +Even the exalted fervour of the invocation to Caponsacchi, +its blending of spiritual ecstasy with half-realized earthly emotion, +has, I think, no parallel in her husband's work. + +`Pompilia' bears, still, unmistakably, the stamp of her author's genius. +Only he could have imagined her peculiar form of consciousness; +her childlike, wondering, yet subtle, perception of the anomalies of life. +He has raised the woman in her from the typical to the individual +by this distinguishing touch of his supreme originality; +and thus infused into her character a haunting pathos which renders it +to many readers the most exquisite in the whole range of his creations. +For others at the same time, it fails in the impressiveness +because it lacks the reality which habitually marks them. + +So much, however, is certain: Mr. Browning would never have accepted +this `murder story' as the subject of a poem, if he could not in some sense +have made it poetical. It was only in an idealized Pompilia +that the material for such a process could be found. We owe it, therefore, +to the one departure from his usual mode of dramatic conception, +that the Poet's masterpiece has been produced. I know no other instance +of what can be even mistaken for reflected inspiration +in the whole range of his work, the given passages in `Pauline' excepted. + +The postscript of a letter to Frederic Leighton written +so far back as October 17, 1864, is interesting in its connection +with the preliminary stages of this great undertaking. + +== +`A favour, if you have time for it. Go into the church St. Lorenzo in Lucina +in the Corso -- and look attentively at it -- so as to describe it to me +on your return. The general arrangement of the building, if with a nave -- +pillars or not -- the number of altars, and any particularity there may be -- +over the High Altar is a famous Crucifixion by Guido. +It will be of great use to me. I don't care about the OUTSIDE.' +== + + + + +Chapter 16 + +1869-1873 + + Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower -- Scotland; Visit to Lady Ashburton -- + Letters to Miss Blagden -- St.-Aubin; The Franco-Prussian War -- + `Herve Riel' -- Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith -- `Balaustion's Adventure'; + `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' -- `Fifine at the Fair' -- + Mistaken Theories of Mr. Browning's Work -- St.-Aubin; + `Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. + + + +From 1869 to 1871 Mr. Browning published nothing; but in April 1870 he wrote +the sonnet called `Helen's Tower', a beautiful tribute to the memory of Helen, +mother of Lord Dufferin, suggested by the memorial tower +which her son was erecting to her on his estate at Clandeboye. +The sonnet appeared in 1883, in the `Pall Mall Gazette', +and was reprinted in 1886, in `Sonnets of the Century', edited by Mr. Sharp; +and again in the fifth part of the Browning Society's `Papers'; +but it is still I think sufficiently little known to justify its reproduction. + +== +Who hears of Helen's Tower may dream perchance + How the Greek Beauty from the Scaean Gate + Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, +Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. + +Hearts would leap otherwise at thy advance, + Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate! + Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, +Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance. + +The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange; + A transitory shame of long ago; + It dies into the sand from which it sprang; +But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change. + God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, + When all the morning-stars together sang. + +April 26, 1870. +== + +Lord Dufferin is a warm admirer of Mr. Browning's genius. +He also held him in strong personal regard. + +In the summer of 1869 the poet, with his sister and son, +changed the manner of his holiday, by joining Mr. Story and his family +in a tour in Scotland, and a visit to Louisa, Lady Ashburton, +at Loch Luichart Lodge; but in the August of 1870 he was again +in the primitive atmosphere of a French fishing village, +though one which had little to recommend it but the society of a friend; +it was M. Milsand's St.-Aubin. He had written, February 24, +to Miss Blagden, under the one inspiration which naturally recurred +in his correspondence with her. + +== +`. . . So you, too, think of Naples for an eventual resting-place! +Yes, that is the proper basking-ground for "bright and aged snakes." +Florence would be irritating, and, on the whole, insufferable -- +Yet I never hear of any one going thither but my heart is twitched. +There is a good, charming, little singing German lady, Miss Regan, +who told me the other day that she was just about revisiting her aunt, +Madame Sabatier, whom you may know, or know of -- and I felt as if +I should immensely like to glide, for a long summer-day +through the streets and between the old stone-walls, -- +unseen come and unheard go -- perhaps by some miracle, I shall do so -- +and look up at Villa Brichieri as Arnold's Gypsy-Scholar +gave one wistful look at "the line of festal light in Christ Church Hall," +before he went to sleep in some forgotten grange. . . . +I am so glad I can be comfortable in your comfort. I fancy exactly +how you feel and see how you live: it IS the Villa Geddes of old days, +I find. I well remember the fine view from the upper room -- +that looking down the steep hill, by the side of which runs +the road you describe -- that path was always my preferred walk, +for its shortness (abruptness) and the fine old wall to your left +(from the Villa) which is overgrown with weeds and wild flowers -- +violets and ground-ivy, I remember. Oh, me! to find myself +some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned to Florence -- +"ten minutes to the gate, ten minutes HOME!" I think I should +fairly end it all on the spot. . . .' +== + +He writes again from St.-Aubin, August 19, 1870: + +== +`Dearest Isa, -- Your letter came prosperously to this little wild place, +where we have been, Sarianna and myself, just a week. +Milsand lives in a cottage with a nice bit of garden, two steps off, +and we occupy another of the most primitive kind on the sea-shore -- +which shore is a good sandy stretch for miles and miles on either side. +I don't think we were ever quite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air +from all quarters as here -- the weather is fine, and we do well enough. +The sadness of the war and its consequences go far to paralyse +all our pleasure, however. . . . + +`Well, you are at Siena -- one of the places I love best to remember. +You are returned -- or I would ask you to tell me how the Villa Alberti wears, +and if the fig-tree behind the house is green and strong yet. +I have a pen-and-ink drawing of it, dated and signed the last day +Ba was ever there -- "my fig tree --" she used to sit under it, +reading and writing. Nine years, or ten rather, since then! +Poor old Landor's oak, too, and his cottage, ought not to be forgotten. +Exactly opposite this house, -- just over the way of the water, -- +shines every night the light-house of Havre -- a place I know well, +and love very moderately: but it always gives me a thrill as I see afar, +EXACTLY a particular spot which I was at along with her. At this moment, +I see the white streak of the phare in the sun, from the window where I write +and I THINK. . . . Milsand went to Paris last week, just before we arrived, +to transport his valuables to a safer place than his house, +which is near the fortifications. He is filled with as much despondency +as can be -- while the old dear and perfect kindness remains. +I never knew or shall know his like among men. . . .' +== + +The war did more than sadden Mr. and Miss Browning's visit to St.-Aubin; +it opposed unlooked-for difficulties to their return home. +They had remained, unconscious of the impending danger, +till Sedan had been taken, the Emperor's downfall proclaimed, +and the country suddenly placed in a state of siege. +One morning M. Milsand came to them in anxious haste, +and insisted on their starting that very day. An order, he said, +had been issued that no native should leave the country, +and it only needed some unusually thick-headed Maire +for Mr. Browning to be arrested as a runaway Frenchman or a Prussian spy. +The usual passenger boats from Calais and Boulogne no longer ran; +but there was, he believed, a chance of their finding one at Havre. +They acted on this warning, and discovered its wisdom +in the various hindrances which they found on their way. +Everywhere the horses had been requisitioned for the war. +The boat on which they had relied to take them down the river to Caen +had been stopped that very morning; and when they reached the railroad +they were told that the Prussians would be at the other end before night. +At last they arrived at Honfleur, where they found an English vessel +which was about to convey cattle to Southampton; and in this, +setting out at midnight, they made their passage to England. + +Some words addressed to Miss Blagden, written I believe in 1871, +once more strike a touching familiar note. + +== +`. . . But NO, dearest Isa. The simple truth is that SHE was the poet, +and I the clever person by comparison -- remember her limited experience +of all kinds, and what she made of it. Remember on the other hand, +how my uninterrupted health and strength and practice with the world +have helped me. . . .' +== + +`Balaustion's Adventure' and `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' were published, +respectively, in August and December 1871. They had been preceded +in the March of the same year by a ballad, `Herve Riel', +afterwards reprinted in the `Pacchiarotto' volume, and which Mr. Browning +now sold to the `Cornhill Magazine' for the benefit of the French sufferers +by the war. + +The circumstances of this little transaction, unique in +Mr. Browning's experience, are set forth in the following letter: + +== + Feb. 4, '71. + +`My dear Smith, -- I want to give something to the people in Paris, +and can afford so very little just now, that I am forced upon an expedient. +Will you buy of me that poem which poor Simeon praised in a letter you saw, +and which I like better than most things I have done of late? -- +Buy, -- I mean, -- the right of printing it in the Pall Mall and, +if you please, the Cornhill also, -- the copyright remaining with me. +You remember you wanted to print it in the Cornhill, and I was obstinate: +there is hardly any occasion on which I should be otherwise, +if the printing any poem of mine in a magazine were purely for my own sake: +so, any liberality you exercise will not be drawn into a precedent +against you. I fancy this is a case in which one may handsomely +puff one's own ware, and I venture to call my verses good for once. +I send them to you directly, because expedition will render +whatever I contribute more valuable: for when you make up your mind +as to how liberally I shall be enabled to give, you must send me a cheque +and I will send the same as the "Product of a Poem" -- so that your light +will shine deservedly. Now, begin proceedings by reading the poem +to Mrs. Smith, -- by whose judgment I will cheerfully be bound; +and, with her approval, second my endeavour as best you can. +Would, -- for the love of France, -- that this were a "Song of a Wren" -- +then should the guineas equal the lines; as it is, do what you safely may +for the song of a Robin -- Browning -- who is yours very truly, +into the bargain. + +`P.S. The copy is so clear and careful that you might, with a good Reader, +print it on Monday, nor need my help for corrections: I shall however +be always at home, and ready at a moment's notice: return the copy, +if you please, as I promised it to my son long ago.' +== + +Mr. Smith gave him 100 guineas as the price of the poem. + +He wrote concerning the two longer poems, first probably +at the close of this year, and again in January 1872, to Miss Blagden. + +== +`. . . By this time you have got my little book (`Hohenstiel') +and seen for yourself whether I make the best or worst of the case. +I think, in the main, he meant to do what I say, and, but for weakness, -- +grown more apparent in his last years than formerly, -- +would have done what I say he did not.* I thought badly of him +at the beginning of his career, ET POUR CAUSE: better afterward, +on the strength of the promises he made, and gave indications of intending +to redeem. I think him very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst +I prefer him to Thiers' best. I am told my little thing is succeeding -- +sold 1,400 in the first five days, and before any notice appeared. +I remember that the year I made the little rough sketch in Rome, '60, +my account for the last six months with Chapman was -- NIL, +not one copy disposed of! . . . + +-- +* This phrase is a little misleading. +-- + +`. . . I am glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh +calls my eulogium on the second empire, -- which it is not, +any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be "a scandalous attack +on the old constant friend of England" -- it is just what I imagine +the man might, if he pleased, say for himself.' +== + +Mr. Browning continues: + +== +`Spite of my ailments and bewailments I have just all but finished +another poem of quite another kind, which shall amuse you in the spring, +I hope! I don't go sound asleep at all events. `Balaustion' -- +the second edition is in the press I think I told you. +2,500 in five months, is a good sale for the likes of me. +But I met Henry Taylor (of Artevelde) two days ago at dinner, +and he said he had never gained anything by his books, +which surely is a shame -- I mean, if no buyers mean no readers. . . .' +== + +`Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' was written in Scotland, +where Mr. Browning was the guest of Mr. Ernest Benzon: +having left his sister to the care of M. and Madame Milsand at St.-Aubin. +The ailment he speaks of consisted, I believe, of a severe cold. +Another of the occurrences of 1871 was Mr. Browning's election +as Life Governor of the London University. + +A passage from a letter dated March 30, '72, bears striking testimony +to the constant warmth of his affections. + +== +`. . . The misfortune, which I did not guess when I accepted the invitation, +is that I shall lose some of the last days of Milsand, who has been here +for the last month: no words can express the love I have for him, you know. +He is increasingly precious to me. . . . Waring came back the other day, +after thirty years' absence, the same as ever, -- nearly. +He has been Prime Minister at New Zealand for a year and a half, +but gets tired, and returns home with a poem.'* + +-- +* `Ranolf and Amohia'. +-- +== + +This is my last extract from the correspondence with Miss Blagden. +Her death closed it altogether within the year. + + +It is difficult to infer from letters, however intimate, +the dominant state of the writer's mind: most of all to do so +in Mr. Browning's case, from such passages of his correspondence +as circumstances allow me to quote. Letters written in intimacy, +and to the same friend, often express a recurrent mood, +a revived set of associations, which for the moment destroys +the habitual balance of feeling. The same effect is sometimes produced +in personal intercourse; and the more varied the life, +the more versatile the nature, the more readily in either case +will a lately unused spring of emotion well up at the passing touch. +We may even fancy we read into the letters of 1870 that eerie, +haunting sadness of a cherished memory from which, in spite of ourselves, +life is bearing us away. We may also err in so doing. +But literary creation, patiently carried on through a given period, +is usually a fair reflection of the general moral and mental conditions +under which it has taken place; and it would be hard to imagine +from Mr. Browning's work during these last ten years +that any but gracious influences had been operating upon his genius, +any more disturbing element than the sense of privation and loss +had entered into his inner life. + +Some leaven of bitterness must, nevertheless, have been working within him, +or he could never have produced that piece of perplexing cynicism, +`Fifine at the Fair' -- the poem referred to as in progress +in a letter to Miss Blagden, and which appeared in the spring of 1872. +The disturbing cause had been also of long standing; +for the deeper reactive processes of Mr. Browning's nature were as slow +as its more superficial response was swift; and while `Dramatis Personae', +`The Ring and the Book', and even `Balaustion's Adventure', +represented the gradually perfected substance of his poetic imagination, +`Fifine at the Fair' was as the froth thrown up by it +during the prolonged simmering which was to leave it clear. +The work displays the iridescent brightness as well as the occasional impurity +of this froth-like character. Beauty and ugliness are, indeed, +almost inseparable in the moral impression which it leaves upon us. +The author has put forth a plea for self-indulgence with a much slighter +attempt at dramatic disguise than his special pleadings generally assume; +and while allowing circumstances to expose the sophistry of the position, +and punish its attendant act, he does not sufficiently condemn it. +But, in identifying himself for the moment with the conception of a Don Juan, +he has infused into it a tenderness and a poetry with which the true type +had very little in common, and which retard its dramatic development. +Those who knew Mr. Browning, or who thoroughly know his work, +may censure, regret, fail to understand `Fifine at the Fair'; +they will never in any important sense misconstrue it. + +But it has been so misconstrued by an intelligent and not +unsympathetic critic; and his construction may be endorsed +by other persons in the present, and still more in the future, +in whom the elements of a truer judgment are wanting. +It seems, therefore, best to protest at once against the misjudgment, +though in so doing I am claiming for it an attention which +it may not seem to deserve. I allude to Mr. Mortimer's `Note on Browning' +in the `Scottish Art Review' for December 1889. This note contains +a summary of Mr. Browning's teaching, which it resolves into +the moral equivalent of the doctrine of the conservation of force. +Mr. Mortimer assumes for the purpose of his comparison +that the exercise of force means necessarily moving on; +and according to him Mr. Browning prescribes action at any price, +even that of defying the restrictions of moral law. He thus, we are told, +blames the lovers in `The Statue and the Bust' for their failure to carry out +what was an immoral intention; and, in the person of his `Don Juan', +defends a husband's claim to relieve the fixity of conjugal affection +by varied adventure in the world of temporary loves: the result being +`the negation of that convention under which we habitually view life, +but which for some reason or other breaks down when we have to face +the problems of a Goethe, a Shelley, a Byron, or a Browning.' + +Mr. Mortimer's generalization does not apply to `The Statue and the Bust', +since Mr. Browning has made it perfectly clear that, in this case, +the intended act is postponed without reference to its morality, +and simply in consequence of a weakness of will, which would have been +as paralyzing to a good purpose as it was to the bad one; +but it is not without superficial sanction in `Fifine at the Fair'; +and the part which the author allowed himself to play in it +did him an injustice only to be measured by the inference +which it has been made to support. There could be no mistake more ludicrous, +were it less regrettable, than that of classing Mr. Browning, +on moral grounds, with Byron or Shelley; even in the case of Goethe +the analogy breaks down. The evidence of the foregoing pages +has rendered all protest superfluous. But the suggested moral resemblance +to the two English poets receives a striking comment +in a fact of Mr. Browning's life which falls practically +into the present period of our history: his withdrawal from Shelley +of the devotion of more than forty years on account of an act of heartlessness +towards his first wife which he held to have been proved against him. + +The sweet and the bitter lay, indeed, very close to each other +at the sources of Mr. Browning's inspiration. Both proceeded, +in great measure, from his spiritual allegiance to the past -- +that past by which it was impossible that he should linger, +but which he could not yet leave behind. The present came to him +with friendly greeting. He was unconsciously, perhaps inevitably, +unjust to what it brought. The injustice reacted upon himself, +and developed by degrees into the cynical mood of fancy +which became manifest in `Fifine at the Fair'. + +It is true that, in the light of this explanation, we see an effect +very unlike its cause; but the chemistry of human emotion +is like that of natural life. It will often form a compound +in which neither of its constituents can be recognized. +This perverse poem was the last as well as the first manifestation +of an ungenial mood of Mr. Browning's mind. A slight exception +may be made for some passages in `Red Cotton Nightcap Country', +and for one of the poems of the `Pacchiarotto' volume; +but otherwise no sign of moral or mental disturbance betrays itself +in his subsequent work. The past and the present gradually assumed for him +a more just relation to each other. He learned to meet life +as it offered itself to him with a more frank recognition of its good gifts, +a more grateful response to them. He grew happier, hence more genial, +as the years advanced. + +It was not without misgiving that Mr. Browning published `Fifine at the Fair'; +but many years were to pass before he realized the kind of criticism +to which it had exposed him. The belief conveyed in the letter +to Miss Blagden that what proceeds from a genuine inspiration +is justified by it, combined with the indifference to public opinion +which had been engendered in him by its long neglect, +made him slow to anticipate the results of external judgment, +even where he was in some degree prepared to endorse them. +For his value as a poet, it was best so. + +The August of 1872 and of 1873 again found him with his sister at St.-Aubin, +and the earlier visit was an important one: since it supplied him +with the materials of his next work, of which Miss Annie Thackeray, +there also for a few days, suggested the title. The tragic drama +which forms the subject of Mr. Browning's poem had been in great part enacted +in the vicinity of St.-Aubin; and the case of disputed inheritance to which +it had given rise was pending at that moment in the tribunals of Caen. +The prevailing impression left on Miss Thackeray's mind +by this primitive district was, she declared, that of white cotton nightcaps +(the habitual headgear of the Normandy peasants). She engaged +to write a story called `White Cotton Nightcap Country'; +and Mr. Browning's quick sense of both contrast and analogy +inspired the introduction of this emblem of repose into his own picture +of that peaceful, prosaic existence, and of the ghastly spiritual conflict +to which it had served as background. He employed a good deal +of perhaps strained ingenuity in the opening pages of the work, +in making the white cap foreshadow the red, itself the symbol of liberty, +and only indirectly connected with tragic events; and he would, +I think, have emphasized the irony of circumstance in a manner +more characteristic of himself, if he had laid his stress on the remoteness +from `the madding crowd', and repeated Miss Thackeray's title. +There can, however, be no doubt that his poetic imagination, +no less than his human insight, was amply vindicated +by his treatment of the story. + +On leaving St.-Aubin he spent a month at Fontainebleau, in a house situated +on the outskirts of the forest; and here his principal indoor occupation +was reading the Greek dramatists, especially Aeschylus, +to whom he had returned with revived interest and curiosity. +`Red Cotton Nightcap Country' was not begun till his return to London +in the later autumn. It was published in the early summer of 1873. + + + + +Chapter 17 + +1873-1878 + + London Life -- Love of Music -- Miss Egerton-Smith -- + Periodical Nervous Exhaustion -- Mers; `Aristophanes' Apology' -- + `Agamemnon' -- `The Inn Album' -- `Pacchiarotto and other Poems' -- + Visits to Oxford and Cambridge -- Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald -- + St. Andrews; Letter from Professor Knight -- In the Savoyard Mountains -- + Death of Miss Egerton-Smith -- `La Saisiaz'; `The Two Poets of Croisic' -- + Selections from his Works. + + + +The period on which we have now entered, covering roughly +the ten or twelve years which followed the publication +of `The Ring and the Book', was the fullest in Mr. Browning's life; +it was that in which the varied claims made by it on his moral, and above all +his physical energies, found in him the fullest power of response. +He could rise early and go to bed late -- this, however, never from choice; +and occupy every hour of the day with work or pleasure, +in a manner which his friends recalled regretfully in later years, +when of two or three engagements which ought to have divided his afternoon, +a single one -- perhaps only the most formally pressing -- could be fulfilled. +Soon after his final return to England, while he still lived +in comparative seclusion, certain habits of friendly intercourse, +often superficial, but always binding, had rooted themselves in his life. +London society, as I have also implied, opened itself to him +in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truer to say, +drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even before the mellowing +kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the least substantial +of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of the poet -- +for a while the natural ambition of the man -- found satisfaction in it. +For a short time, indeed, he entered into the fashionable routine +of country-house visiting. Besides the instances I have already given, +and many others which I may have forgotten, he was heard of, +during the earlier part of this decade, as the guest of Lord Carnarvon +at Highclere Castle, of Lord Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, +of Lord Brownlow and his mother, Lady Marian Alford, at Belton and Ashridge. +Somewhat later, he stayed with Mr. and Lady Alice Gaisford +at a house they temporarily occupied on the Sussex downs; +with Mr. Cholmondeley at Condover, and, much more recently, +at Aynhoe Park with Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright. Kind and pressing, +and in themselves very tempting invitations of this nature came to him +until the end of his life; but he very soon made a practice of declining them, +because their acceptance could only renew for him the fatigues +of the London season, while the tantalizing beauty and repose of the country +lay before his eyes; but such visits, while they continued, +were one of the necessary social experiences which brought +their grist to his mill. + +And now, in addition to the large social tribute which he received, +and had to pay, he was drinking in all the enjoyment, and incurring +all the fatigue which the London musical world could create for him. +In Italy he had found the natural home of the other arts. The one poem, +`Old Pictures in Florence', is sufficiently eloquent of long communion +with the old masters and their works; and if his history in Florence and Rome +had been written in his own letters instead of those of his wife, +they must have held many reminiscences of galleries and studios, +and of the places in which pictures are bought and sold. +But his love for music was as certainly starved as the delight +in painting and sculpture was nourished; and it had now grown into a passion, +from the indulgence of which he derived, as he always declared, +some of the most beneficent influences of his life. It would be scarcely +an exaggeration to say that he attended every important concert of the season, +whether isolated or given in a course. There was no engagement +possible or actual, which did not yield to the discovery of its clashing +with the day and hour fixed for one of these. His frequent companion +on such occasions was Miss Egerton-Smith. + +Miss Smith became only known to Mr. Browning's general acquaintance +through the dedicatory `A. E. S.' of `La Saisiaz'; but she was, +at the time of her death, one of his oldest women friends. +He first met her as a young woman in Florence when she was visiting there; +and the love for and proficiency in music soon asserted itself +as a bond of sympathy between them. They did not, however, +see much of each other till he had finally left Italy, +and she also had made her home in London. She there led a secluded life, +although free from family ties, and enjoying a large income +derived from the ownership of an important provincial paper. +Mr. Browning was one of the very few persons whose society +she cared to cultivate; and for many years the common musical interest +took the practical, and for both of them convenient form, +of their going to concerts together. After her death, in the autumn of 1877, +he almost mechanically renounced all the musical entertainments +to which she had so regularly accompanied him. The special motive +and special facility were gone -- she had been wont to call for him +in her carriage; the habit was broken; there would have been first pain, +and afterwards an unwelcome exertion in renewing it. Time was also +beginning to sap his strength, while society, and perhaps friendship, +were making increasing claims upon it. It may have been for this same reason +that music after a time seemed to pass out of his life altogether. +Yet its almost sudden eclipse was striking in the case of one +who not only had been so deeply susceptible to its emotional influences, +so conversant with its scientific construction and its multitudinous forms, +but who was acknowledged as `musical' by those who best knew +the subtle and complex meaning of that often misused term. + +Mr. Browning could do all that I have said during the period through which +we are now following him; but he could not quite do it with impunity. +Each winter brought its searching attack of cold and cough; +each summer reduced him to the state of nervous prostration or physical apathy +of which I have already spoken, and which at once rendered +change imperative, and the exertion of seeking it almost intolerable. +His health and spirits rebounded at the first draught of foreign air; +the first breath from an English cliff or moor might have had the same result. +But the remembrance of this fact never nerved him to the preliminary effort. +The conviction renewed itself with the close of every season, +that the best thing which could happen to him would be to be +left quiet at home; and his disinclination to face even the idea of moving +equally hampered his sister in her endeavour to make timely arrangements +for their change of abode. + +This special craving for rest helped to limit the area from which +their summer resort could be chosen. It precluded all idea of `pension'-life, +hence of any much-frequented spot in Switzerland or Germany. +It was tacitly understood that the shortening days were not to be passed +in England. Italy did not yet associate itself with the possibilities +of a moderately short absence; the resources of the northern French coast +were becoming exhausted; and as the August of 1874 approached, +the question of how and where this and the following months +were to be spent was, perhaps, more than ever a perplexing one. +It was now Miss Smith who became the means of its solution. +She had more than once joined Mr. and Miss Browning at the seaside. +She was anxious this year to do so again, and she suggested for their meeting +a quiet spot called Mers, almost adjoining the fashionable Treport, +but distinct from it. It was agreed that they should try it; +and the experiment, which they had no reason to regret, +opened also in some degree a way out of future difficulties. +Mers was young, and had the defect of its quality. Only one desirable house +was to be found there; and the plan of joint residence became converted +into one of joint housekeeping, in which Mr. and Miss Browning +at first refused to concur, but which worked so well that it was renewed +in the three ensuing summers: Miss Smith retaining the initiative +in the choice of place, her friends the right of veto upon it. +They stayed again together in 1875 at Villers, on the coast of Normandy; +in 1876 at the Isle of Arran; in 1877 at a house called La Saisiaz -- +Savoyard for the sun -- in the Saleve district near Geneva. + +The autumn months of 1874 were marked for Mr. Browning +by an important piece of work: the production of `Aristophanes' Apology'. +It was far advanced when he returned to London in November, +after a visit to Antwerp, where his son was studying art under M. Heyermans; +and its much later appearance must have been intended +to give breathing time to the readers of `Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. +Mr. Browning subsequently admitted that he sometimes, during these years, +allowed active literary occupation to interfere too much +with the good which his holiday might have done him; but the temptations +to literary activity were this time too great to be withstood. +The house occupied by him at Mers (Maison Robert) was the last +of the straggling village, and stood on a rising cliff. +In front was the open sea; beyond it a long stretch of down; +everywhere comparative solitude. Here, in uninterrupted quiet, +and in a room devoted to his use, Mr. Browning would work till +the afternoon was advanced, and then set forth on a long walk over the cliffs, +often in the face of a wind which, as he wrote of it at the time, +he could lean against as if it were a wall. And during this time +he was living, not only in his work, but with the man who had inspired it. +The image of Aristophanes, in the half-shamed insolence, +the disordered majesty, in which he is placed before the reader's mind, +was present to him from the first moment in which the Defence was conceived. +What was still more interesting, he could see him, hear him, +think with him, speak for him, and still inevitably condemn him. +No such instance of always ingenious, and sometimes earnest pleading +foredoomed to complete discomfiture, occurs in Mr. Browning's works. + +To Aristophanes he gave the dramatic sympathy which one lover of life +can extend to another, though that other unduly extol its lower forms. +To Euripides he brought the palm of the higher truth, +to his work the tribute of the more pathetic human emotion. +Even these for a moment ministered to the greatness of Aristophanes, +in the tear shed by him to the memory of his rival, +in the hour of his own triumph; and we may be quite sure +that when Mr. Browning depicted that scene, and again when he translated +the great tragedian's words, his own eyes were dimmed. +Large tears fell from them, and emotion choked his voice, +when he first read aloud the transcript of the `Herakles' to a friend, +who was often privileged to hear him. + +Mr. Browning's deep feeling for the humanities of Greek literature, +and his almost passionate love for the language, contrasted strongly +with his refusal to regard even the first of Greek writers +as models of literary style. The pretensions raised for them on this ground +were inconceivable to him; and his translation of the `Agamemnon', +published 1877, was partly made, I am convinced, for the pleasure of exposing +these claims, and of rebuking them. His preface to the transcript gives +evidence of this. The glee with which he pointed to it when it first appeared +was no less significant. + +At Villers, in 1875, he only corrected the proofs of `The Inn Album' +for publication in November. When the party started for the Isle of Arran, +in the autumn of 1876, the `Pacchiarotto' volume had already appeared. + +When Mr. Browning discontinued his short-lived habit of visiting +away from home, he made an exception in favour of the Universities. +His occasional visits to Oxford and Cambridge were maintained +till the very end of his life, with increasing frequency in the former case; +and the days spent at Balliol and Trinity afforded him as unmixed a pleasure +as was compatible with the interruption of his daily habits, +and with a system of hospitality which would detain him +for many hours at table. A vivid picture of them is given +in two letters, dated January 20 and March 10, 1877, +and addressed to one of his constant correspondents, +Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of Shalstone Manor, Buckingham. + +== +Dear Friend, I have your letter of yesterday, and thank you all I can +for its goodness and graciousness to me unworthy . . . I returned on Thursday +-- the hospitality of our Master being not easy to set aside. +But to begin with the beginning: the passage from London to Oxford +was exceptionally prosperous -- the train was full of men my friends. +I was welcomed on arriving by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms, -- +then came the pleasant meeting with Jowett who at once took me to tea +with his other guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London, +Dean of Westminster, the Airlies, Cardwells, male and female. +Then came the banquet -- (I enclose you the plan having no doubt +that you will recognise the name of many an acquaintance: please return it) +-- and, the dinner done, speechifying set in vigorously. +The Archbishop proposed the standing `Floreat domus de Balliolo' -- +to which the Master made due and amusing answer, himself giving +the health of the Primate. Lord Coleridge, in a silvery speech, +drank to the University, responded to by the Vice-Chancellor. +I forget who proposed the visitors -- the Bishop of London, +perhaps Lord Cardwell. Professor Smith gave the two Houses of Parliament, -- +Jowett, the Clergy, coupling with it the name of your friend Mr. Rogers -- +on whom he showered every kind of praise, and Mr. Rogers returned thanks +very characteristically and pleasantly. Lord Lansdowne drank to the Bar +(Mr. Bowen), Lord Camperdown to -- I really forget what: +Mr. Green to Literature and Science delivering a most undeserved eulogium +on myself, with a more rightly directed one on Arnold, Swinburne, +and the old pride of Balliol, Clough: this was cleverly and almost touchingly +answered by dear Mat Arnold. Then the Dean of Westminster +gave the Fellows and Scholars -- and then -- twelve o'clock struck. +We were, counting from the time of preliminary assemblage, +six hours and a half engaged: FULLY five and a half nailed to our chairs +at the table: but the whole thing was brilliant, genial, +and suggestive of many and various thoughts to me -- and there was a warmth, +earnestness, and yet refinement about it which I never experienced +in any previous public dinner. Next morning I breakfasted +with Jowett and his guests, found that return would be difficult: +while as the young men were to return on Friday there would be no opposition +to my departure on Thursday. The morning was dismal with rain, +but after luncheon there was a chance of getting a little air, +and I walked for more than two hours, then heard service in New Coll. -- +then dinner again: my room had been prepared in the Master's house. +So, on Thursday, after yet another breakfast, I left by the noon-day train, +after all sorts of kindly offices from the Master. . . . +No reporters were suffered to be present -- the account in yesterday's Times +was furnished by one or more of the guests; it is quite correct +as far as it goes. There were, I find, certain little paragraphs +which must have been furnished by `guessers': Swinburne, set down as present +-- was absent through his Father's illness: the Cardinal also excused himself +as did the Bishop of Salisbury and others. . . . + Ever yours + R. Browning. +== + +The second letter, from Cambridge, was short and written in haste, +at the moment of Mr. Browning's departure; but it tells the same tale +of general kindness and attention. Engagements for no less than six meals +had absorbed the first day of the visit. The occasion was that +of Professor Joachim's investiture with his Doctor's degree; +and Mr. Browning declares that this ceremony, the concert given +by the great violinist, and his society, were `each and all' +worth the trouble of the journey. He himself was to receive +the Cambridge degree of LL.D. in 1879, the Oxford D.C.L. in 1882. +A passage in another letter addressed to the same friend, +refers probably to a practical reminiscence of `Red Cotton Nightcap Country', +which enlivened the latter experience, and which Mrs. Fitz-Gerald +had witnessed with disapprobation.* + +-- +* An actual red cotton nightcap had been made to flutter down + on to the Poet's head. +-- + +== +. . . You are far too hard on the very harmless drolleries of the young men, +licensed as they are moreover by immemorial usage. Indeed there used to be +a regularly appointed jester, `Filius Terrae' he was called, +whose business it was to jibe and jeer at the honoured ones, +by way of reminder that all human glories are merely gilded bubbles +and must not be fancied metal. You saw that the Reverend Dons escaped no more +than the poor Poet -- or rather I should say than myself the poor Poet -- +for I was pleased to observe with what attention they listened +to the Newdigate. . . . + Ever affectionately yours, + R. Browning. +== + +In 1875 he was unanimously nominated by its Independent Club, +to the office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; +and in 1877 he again received the offer of the Rectorship of St. Andrews, +couched in very urgent and flattering terms. A letter addressed to him from +this University by Dr. William Knight, Professor of Moral Philosophy there, +which I have his permission to publish, bears witness to what had long been +and was always to remain a prominent fact of Mr. Browning's literary career: +his great influence on the minds of the rising generation of his countrymen. + +== + The University, St. Andrews N.B.: Nov. 17, 1877. + +My dear Sir, -- . . . The students of this University, in which +I have the honour to hold office, have nominated you as their Lord Rector; +and intend unanimously, I am told, to elect you to that office on Thursday. + +I believe that hitherto no Rector has been chosen by the undivided suffrage +of any Scottish University. They have heard however that you are unable +to accept the office: and your committee, who were deeply disappointed +to learn this afternoon of the way in which you have been informed +of their intentions, are, I believe, writing to you on the subject. +So keen is their regret that they intend respectfully to wait upon you +on Tuesday morning by deputation, and ask if you cannot +waive your difficulties in deference to their enthusiasm, +and allow them to proceed with your election. + +Their suffrage may, I think, be regarded as one sign +of how the thoughtful youth of Scotland estimate the work you have done +in the world of letters. + +And permit me to say that while these Rectorial elections +in the other Universities have frequently turned on local questions, +or been inspired by political partisanship, St. Andrews has honourably sought +to choose men distinguished for literary eminence, and to make the Rectorship +a tribute at once of intellectual and moral esteem. + +May I add that when the `perfervidum ingenium' of our northern race +takes the form not of youthful hero-worship, but of loyal admiration +and respectful homage, it is a very genuine affair. In the present instance +I may say it is no mere outburst of young undisciplined enthusiasm, +but an honest expression of intellectual and moral indebtedness, +the genuine and distinct tribute of many minds that have been touched +to some higher issues by what you have taught them. They do not presume +to speak of your place in English literature. They merely tell you +by this proffered honour (the highest in their power to bestow), +how they have felt your influence over them. + +My own obligations to you, and to the author of Aurora Leigh, are such, +that of them `silence is golden'. Yours ever gratefully. + William Knight. +== + +Mr. Browning was deeply touched and gratified by these professions of esteem. +He persisted nevertheless in his refusal. The Glasgow nomination +had also been declined by him. + +On August 17, 1877, he wrote to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald from La Saisiaz: + +== +`How lovely is this place in its solitude and seclusion, +with its trees and shrubs and flowers, and above all its live mountain stream +which supplies three fountains, and two delightful baths, +a marvel of delicate delight framed in with trees -- I bathe there +twice a day -- and then what wonderful views from the chalet on every side! +Geneva lying under us, with the lake and the whole plain +bounded by the Jura and our own Saleve, which latter seems rather close +behind our house, and yet takes a hard hour and a half to ascend -- +all this you can imagine since you know the environs of the town; +the peace and quiet move me the most -- And I fancy I shall drowse out +the two months or more, doing no more of serious work than reading -- +and that is virtuous renunciation of the glorious view to my right here -- +as I sit aerially like Euripides, and see the clouds come and go +and the view change in correspondence with them. It will help me +to get rid of the pain which attaches itself to the recollections +of Lucerne and Berne "in the old days when the Greeks suffered so much," +as Homer says. But a very real and sharp pain touched me here +when I heard of the death of poor Virginia March whom I knew particularly, +and parted with hardly a fortnight ago, leaving her affectionate +and happy as ever. The tones of her voice as on one memorable occasion +she ejaculated repeatedly `Good friend!' are fresh still. +Poor Virginia! . . .' +== + +Mr. Browning was more than quiescent during this stay +in the Savoyard mountains. He was unusually depressed, +and unusually disposed to regard the absence from home as a banishment; +and he tried subsequently to account for this condition +by the shadow which coming trouble sometimes casts before it. +It was more probably due to the want of the sea air which he had enjoyed +for so many years, and to that special oppressive heat of the Swiss valleys +which ascends with them to almost their highest level. When he said +that the Saleve seemed close behind the house, he was saying in other words +that the sun beat back from, and the air was intercepted by it. +We see, nevertheless, in his description of the surrounding scenery, +a promise of the contemplative delight in natural beauty to be henceforth +so conspicuous in his experience, and which seemed a new feature in it. +He had hitherto approached every living thing with curious +and sympathetic observation -- this hardly requires saying of one +who had animals for his first and always familiar friends. +Flowers also attracted him by their perfume. But what he loved in nature +was essentially its prefiguring of human existence, or its echo of it; +and it never appeared, in either his works or his conversation, +that he was much impressed by its inanimate forms -- +by even those larger phenomena of mountain and cloud-land +on which the latter dwells. Such beauty as most appealed to him +he had left behind with the joys and sorrows of his Italian life, +and it had almost inevitably passed out of his consideration. +During years of his residence in London he never thought of the country +as a source of pleasurable emotions, other than those contingent +on renewed health; and the places to which he resorted +had often not much beyond their health-giving qualities to recommend them; +his appetite for the beautiful had probably dwindled for lack of food. +But when a friend once said to him: `You have not a great love for nature, +have you?' he had replied: `Yes, I have, but I love men and women better;' +and the admission, which conveyed more than it literally expressed, +would have been true I believe at any, up to the present, +period of his history. Even now he did not cease to love men and women best; +but he found increasing enjoyment in the beauties of nature, +above all as they opened upon him on the southern slopes of the Alps; +and the delight of the aesthetic sense merged gradually +in the satisfied craving for pure air and brilliant sunshine +which marked his final struggle for physical life. A ring of enthusiasm +comes into his letters from the mountains, and deepens as the years advance; +doubtless enhanced by the great -- perhaps too great -- exhilaration +which the Alpine atmosphere produced, but also in large measure +independent of it. Each new place into which the summer carries him +he declares more beautiful than the last. It possibly was so. + +A touch of autumnal freshness had barely crept into the atmosphere +of the Saleve, when a moral thunderbolt fell on the little group of persons +domiciled at its base: Miss Egerton-Smith died, in what had seemed for her +unusually good health, in the act of preparing for a mountain excursion +with her friends -- the words still almost on her lips +in which she had given some directions for their comfort. +Mr. Browning's impressionable nervous system was for a moment paralyzed +by the shock. It revived in all the emotional and intellectual impulses +which gave birth to `La Saisiaz'. + +This poem contains, besides its personal reference and association, +elements of distinctive biographical interest. It is the author's +first -- as also last -- attempt to reconstruct his hope of immortality +by a rational process based entirely on the fundamental facts +of his own knowledge and consciousness -- God and the human soul; +and while the very assumption of these facts, as basis for reasoning, +places him at issue with scientific thought, there is +in his way of handling them a tribute to the scientific spirit, +perhaps foreshadowed in the beautiful epilogue to `Dramatis Personae', +but of which there is no trace in his earlier religious works. +It is conclusive both in form and matter as to his heterodox attitude +towards Christianity. He was no less, in his way, a Christian +when he wrote `La Saisiaz' than when he published `A Death in the Desert' +and `Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; or at any period subsequent to that +in which he accepted without questioning what he had learned +at his mother's knee. He has repeatedly written or declared +in the words of Charles Lamb:* `If Christ entered the room +I should fall on my knees;' and again, in those of Napoleon: +`I am an understander of men, and HE was no man.' He has even added: +`If he had been, he would have been an impostor.' But the arguments, +in great part negative, set forth in `La Saisiaz' for the immortality +of the soul, leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, +of a Christian revelation on the subject. Christ remained for Mr. Browning +a mystery and a message of Divine Love, but no messenger of Divine intention +towards mankind. + +-- +* These words have more significance when taken with their context. + `If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up + to meet him; but if that Person [meaning Christ] was to come into the room, + we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment.' +-- + +The dialogue between Fancy and Reason is not only an admission of uncertainty +as to the future of the Soul: it is a plea for it; and as such +it gathers up into its few words of direct statement, threads of reasoning +which have been traceable throughout Mr. Browning's work. +In this plea for uncertainty lies also a full and frank acknowledgment +of the value of the earthly life; and as interpreted by his general views, +that value asserts itself, not only in the means of probation +which life affords, but in its existing conditions of happiness. +No one, he declares, possessing the certainty of a future state +would patiently and fully live out the present; and since the future can be +only the ripened fruit of the present, its promise would be neutralized, +as well as actual experience dwarfed, by a definite revelation. +Nor, conversely, need the want of a certified future depress the present +spiritual and moral life. It is in the nature of the Soul that it would +suffer from the promise. The existence of God is a justification for hope. +And since the certainty would be injurious to the Soul, +hence destructive to itself, the doubt -- in other words, the hope -- +becomes a sufficient approach to, a working substitute for it. +It is pathetic to see how in spite of the convictions thus rooted +in Mr. Browning's mind, the expressed craving for more knowledge, +for more light, will now and then escape him. + +Even orthodox Christianity gives no assurance of reunion to those +whom death has separated. It is obvious that Mr. Browning's poetic creed +could hold no conviction regarding it. He hoped for such reunion +in proportion as he wished. There must have been moments in his life +when the wish in its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. +`Prospice' appears to prove this. But the wide range of imagination, +no less than the lack of knowledge, forbade in him any forecast +of the possibilities of the life to come. He believed that if granted, +it would be an advance on the present -- an accession of knowledge +if not an increase of happiness. He was satisfied that whatever it gave, +and whatever it withheld, it would be good. In his normal condition +this sufficed to him. + +`La Saisiaz' appeared in the early summer of 1878, and with it +`The Two Poets of Croisic', which had been written immediately after it. +The various incidents of this poem are strictly historical; they lead the way +to a characteristic utterance of Mr. Browning's philosophy of life +to which I shall recur later. + +In 1872 Mr. Browning had published a first series of selections +from his works; it was to be followed by a second in 1880. +In a preface to the earlier volume, he indicates the plan +which he has followed in the choice and arrangement of poems; +and some such intention runs also through the second; since he declined +a suggestion made to him for the introduction or placing of a special poem, +on the ground of its not conforming to the end he had in view. +It is difficult, in the one case as in the other, to reconstruct +the imagined personality to which his preface refers; and his words +on the later occasion pointed rather to that idea of a chord of feeling +which is raised by the correspondence of the first and last poems +of the respective groups. But either clue may be followed with interest. + + + + +Chapter 18 + +1878-1884 + + He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald -- Venice -- + Favourite Alpine Retreats -- Mrs. Arthur Bronson -- Life in Venice -- + A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre -- Mr. Cholmondeley -- Mr. Browning's + Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow -- + `Dramatic Idyls' -- `Jocoseria' -- `Ferishtah's Fancies'. + + + +The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter +in Mr. Browning's habits and experience. It impelled him finally +to break with the associations of the last seventeen autumns, +which he remembered more in their tedious or painful circumstances +than in the unexciting pleasure and renewed physical health +which he had derived from them. He was weary of the ever-recurring effort +to uproot himself from his home life, only to become stationary +in some more or less uninteresting northern spot. The always latent +desire for Italy sprang up in him, and with it the often present +thought and wish to give his sister the opportunity of seeing it. + +Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them both too well; +but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, +though as usual reluctantly, and not till the last moment, +that they should move southwards in the August of 1878. +Their route lay over the Spluegen; and having heard of a comfortable hotel +near the summit of the Pass, they agreed to remain there +till the heat had sufficiently abated to allow of the descent into Lombardy. +The advantages of this first arrangement exceeded their expectations. +It gave them solitude without the sense of loneliness. +A little stream of travellers passed constantly over the mountain, +and they could shake hands with acquaintances at night, +and know them gone in the morning. They dined at the table d'hote, +but took all other meals alone, and slept in a detached wing or `dependance' +of the hotel. Their daily walks sometimes carried them down to the Via Mala; +often to the top of the ascent, where they could rest, +looking down into Italy; and would even be prolonged +over a period of five hours and an extent of seventeen miles. +Now, as always, the mountain air stimulated Mr. Browning's physical energy; +and on this occasion it also especially quickened his imaginative powers. +He was preparing the first series of `Dramatic Idylls'; and several of these, +including `Ivan Ivanovitch', were produced with such rapidity +that Miss Browning refused to countenance a prolonged stay on the mountain, +unless he worked at a more reasonable rate. + +They did not linger on their way to Asolo and Venice, +except for a night's rest on the Lake of Como and two days at Verona. +In their successive journeys through Northern Italy they visited by degrees +all its notable cities, and it would be easy to recall, in order and detail, +most of these yearly expeditions. But the account of them +would chiefly resolve itself into a list of names and dates; +for Mr. Browning had seldom a new impression to receive, even from localities +which he had not seen before. I know that he and his sister +were deeply struck by the deserted grandeurs of Ravenna; +and that it stirred in both of them a memorable sensation to wander +as they did for a whole day through the pinewoods consecrated by Dante. +I am nevertheless not sure that when they performed the repeated round +of picture-galleries and palaces, they were not sometimes +simply paying their debt to opportunity, and as much for each other's sake +as for their own. Where all was Italy, there was little to gain or lose +in one memorial of greatness, one object of beauty, visited or left unseen. +But in Asolo, even in Venice, Mr. Browning was seeking something more: +the remembrance of his own actual and poetic youth. How far he found it +in the former place we may infer from a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald. + +== + Sept. 28, 1878. + +And from `Asolo', at last, dear friend! So can dreams come FALSE. +-- S., who has been writing at the opposite side of the table, +has told you about our journey and adventures, such as they were: +but she cannot tell you the feelings with which I revisit this +-- to me -- memorable place after above forty years' absence, -- +such things have begun and ended with me in the interval! +It was TOO strange when we reached the ruined tower +on the hill-top yesterday, and I said `Let me try if the echo still exists +which I discovered here,' (you can produce it from only ONE particular spot +on a remainder of brickwork --) and thereupon it answered me plainly as ever, +after all the silence: for some children from the adjoining `podere', +happening to be outside, heard my voice and its result -- +and began trying to perform the feat -- calling `Yes, yes' -- all in vain: +so, perhaps, the mighty secret will die with me! We shall probably stay here +a day or two longer, -- the air is so pure, the country so attractive: +but we must go soon to Venice, stay our allotted time there, +and then go homeward: you will of course address letters to Venice, +not this place: it is a pleasure I promise myself that, on arriving +I shall certainly hear you speak in a letter which I count upon finding. + +The old inn here, to which I would fain have betaken myself, +is gone -- levelled to the ground: I remember it was much damaged by +a recent earthquake, and the cracks and chasms may have threatened a downfall. +This Stella d'Oro is, however, much such an unperverted `locanda' +as its predecessor -- primitive indeed are the arrangements +and unsophisticate the ways: but there is cleanliness, abundance of goodwill, +and the sweet Italian smile at every mistake: we get on excellently. +To be sure never was such a perfect fellow-traveller, for my purposes, as S., +so that I have no subject of concern -- if things suit me they suit her -- +and vice-versa. I daresay she will have told you how we trudged together, +this morning to Possagno -- through a lovely country: +how we saw all the wonders -- and a wonder of detestability +is the paint-performance of the great man! -- and how, on our return, +we found the little town enjoying high market day, and its privilege +of roaring and screaming over a bargain. It confuses me altogether, -- +but at Venice I may write more comfortably. You will till then, Dear Friend, +remember me ever as yours affectionately, + Robert Browning. +== + +If the tone of this does not express disappointment, +it has none of the rapture which his last visit was to inspire. +The charm which forty years of remembrance had cast around +the little city on the hill was dispelled for, at all events, the time being. +The hot weather and dust-covered landscape, with the more than primitive +accommodation of which he spoke in a letter to another friend, +may have contributed something to this result. + +At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects. +A London acquaintance, who passed them on their way to Italy, +had recommended a cool and quiet hotel there, the Albergo dell' Universo. +The house, Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, was situated on the shady side +of the Grand Canal, just below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge. +The open stretches of the Giudecca lay not far behind; and a scrap of garden +and a clean and open little street made pleasant the approach +from back and side. It accommodated few persons in proportion to its size, +and fewer still took up their abode there; for it was managed by a lady +of good birth and fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been; +and her husband, a retired Austrian officer, and two grown-up daughters +did not lighten her task. Every year the fortunes sank lower; +the upper storey of the house was already falling into decay, +and the fine old furniture passing into the brokers' or private buyers' hands. +It still, however, afforded sufficiently comfortable, +and, by reason of its very drawbacks, desirable quarters to Mr. Browning. +It perhaps turned the scale in favour of his return to Venice; for the lady +whose hospitality he was to enjoy there was as yet unknown to him; +and nothing would have induced him to enter, with his eyes open, +one of the English-haunted hotels, in which acquaintance, old and new, +would daily greet him in the public rooms or jostle him in the corridors. + +He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight; +their programme did not this year include a longer stay; +but it gave them time to decide that no place could better suit them +for an autumn holiday than Venice, or better lend itself +to a preparatory sojourn among the Alps; and the plan of their next, +and, though they did not know it, many a following summer, +was thus sketched out before the homeward journey had begun. + +Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even while resting from it; +if indeed he did rest entirely on this occasion. He consulted +a Russian lady whom he met at the hotel, on the names he was introducing +in `Ivan Ivanovitch'. It would be interesting to know +what suggestions or corrections she made, and how far they adapted themselves +to the rhythm already established, or compelled changes in it; +but the one alternative would as little have troubled him as the other. +Mrs. Browning told Mr. Prinsep that her husband could never +alter the wording of a poem without rewriting it, indeed, +practically converting it into another; though he more than once +tried to do so at her instigation. But to the end of his life he could +at any moment recast a line or passage for the sake of greater correctness, +and leave all that was essential in it untouched. + +Seven times more in the eleven years which remained to him, +Mr. Browning spent the autumn in Venice. Once also, in 1882, +he had proceeded towards it as far as Verona, when the floods +which marked the autumn of that year arrested his farther course. +Each time he had halted first in some more or less elevated spot, +generally suggested by his French friend, Monsieur Dourlans, +himself an inveterate wanderer, whose inclinations also +tempted him off the beaten track. The places he most enjoyed +were Saint-Pierre la Chartreuse, and Gressoney Saint-Jean, +where he stayed respectively in 1881 and 1882, 1883 and 1885. +Both of these had the drawbacks, and what might easily have been the dangers, +of remoteness from the civilized world. But this weighed with him so little, +that he remained there in each case till the weather had broken, +though there was no sheltered conveyance in which he and his sister +could travel down; and on the later occasions at least, +circumstances might easily have combined to prevent their departure +for an indefinite time. He became, indeed, so attached to Gressoney, +with its beautiful outlook upon Monte Rosa, that nothing I believe +would have hindered his returning, or at least contemplating a return to it, +but the great fatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain, +by a path which made walking, wherever possible, the easier course. +They did walk DOWN it in the early October of 1885, +and completed the hard seven hours' trudge to San Martino d'Aosta, +without an atom of refreshment or a minute's rest. + +One of the great attractions of Saint-Pierre was the vicinity +of the Grande Chartreuse, to which Mr. Browning made frequent expeditions, +staying there through the night in order to hear the midnight mass. +Miss Browning also once attempted the visit, but was not allowed +to enter the monastery. She slept in the adjoining convent. + +The brother and sister were again at the Universo in 1879, 1880, and 1881; +but the crash was rapidly approaching, and soon afterwards it came. +The old Palazzo passed into other hands, and after a short period +of private ownership was consigned to the purposes of an Art Gallery. + +In 1880, however, they had been introduced by Mrs. Story +to an American resident, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, and entered into +most friendly relations with her; and when, after a year's interval, +they were again contemplating an autumn in Venice, she placed +at their disposal a suite of rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, +which formed a supplement to her own house -- making the offer +with a kindly urgency which forbade all thought of declining it. +They inhabited these for a second time in 1885, keeping house for themselves +in the simple but comfortable foreign manner they both so well enjoyed, +only dining and spending the evening with their friend. But when, in 1888, +they were going, as they thought, to repeat the arrangement, +they found, to their surprise, a little apartment prepared for them +under Mrs. Bronson's own roof. This act of hospitality involved +a special kindness on her part, of which Mr. Browning only became aware +at the close of a prolonged stay; and a sense of increased gratitude +added itself to the affectionate regard with which his hostess +had already inspired both his sister and him. So far as he is concerned, +the fact need only be indicated. It is fully expressed +in the preface to `Asolando'. + +During the first and fresher period of Mr. Browning's visits to Venice, +he found a passing attraction in its society. It held an historical element +which harmonized well with the decayed magnificence of the city, +its old-world repose, and the comparatively simple modes of intercourse +still prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's `salon' was hospitably open +whenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, +and the conservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, +preserved it from the heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreign sociability +so often assumes. Very interesting, even important names +lent their prestige to her circle; and those of Don Carlos and his family, +of Prince and Princess Iturbide, of Prince and Princess Metternich, +and of Princess Montenegro, were on the list of her `habitues', +and, in the case of the royal Spaniards, of her friends. +It need hardly be said that the great English poet, +with his fast spreading reputation and his infinite social charm, +was kindly welcomed and warmly appreciated amongst them. + +English and American acquaintances also congregated in Venice, +or passed through it from London, Florence, and Rome. +Those resident in Italy could make their visits coincide +with those of Mr. Browning and his sister, or undertake the journey +for the sake of seeing them; while the outward conditions of life +were such as to render friendly intercourse more satisfactory, +and common social civilities less irksome than they could be at home. +Mr. Browning was, however, already too advanced in years, +too familiar with everything which the world can give, to be long affected +by the novelty of these experiences. It was inevitable that the need of rest, +though often for the moment forgotten, should assert itself more and more. +He gradually declined on the society of a small number +of resident or semi-resident friends; and, due exception being made +for the hospitalities of his temporary home, became indebted to the kindness +of Sir Henry and Lady Layard, of Mr. and Mrs. Curtis of Palazzo Barbaro, +and of Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Eden, for most of the social pleasure and comfort +of his later residences in Venice. + +Part of a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald gives an insight into +the character of his life there: all the stronger that it was written +under a temporary depression which it partly serves to explain. + +== + Albergo dell' Universo, Venezia, Italia: Sept. 24, '81. + +`Dear Friend, -- On arriving here I found your letter +to my great satisfaction -- and yesterday brought the `Saturday Review' -- +for which, many thanks. + +`We left our strange but lovely place on the 18th, reaching Chambery +at evening, -- stayed the next day there, -- walking, +among other diversions to "Les Charmettes", the famous abode of Rousseau -- +kept much as when he left it: I visited it with my wife perhaps +twenty-five years ago, and played so much of "Rousseau's Dream" as could +be effected on his antique harpsichord: this time I attempted the same feat, +but only two notes or thereabouts out of the octave would answer the touch. +Next morning we proceeded to Turin, and on Wednesday got here, +in the middle of the last night of the Congress Carnival -- +rowing up the Canal to our Albergo through a dazzling blaze of lights +and throng of boats, -- there being, if we are told truly, +50,000 strangers in the city. Rooms had been secured for us, however: +and the festivities are at an end, to my great joy, -- for Venice is resuming +its old quiet aspect -- the only one I value at all. Our American friends +wanted to take us in their gondola to see the principal illuminations +AFTER the "Serenade", which was not over before midnight -- +but I was contented with THAT -- being tired and indisposed for talking, +and, having seen and heard quite enough from our own balcony, went to bed: +S. having betaken her to her own room long before. + +`Next day we took stock of our acquaintances, -- found that the Storys, +on whom we had counted for company, were at Vallombrosa, though the two sons +have a studio here -- other friends are in sufficient number however -- +and last evening we began our visits by a very classical one -- +to the Countess Mocenigo, in her palace which Byron occupied: +she is a charming widow since two years, -- young, pretty and of +the prettiest manners: she showed us all the rooms Byron had lived in, -- +and I wrote my name in her album ON the desk himself wrote +the last canto of `Ch. Harold' and `Beppo' upon. There was a small party: +we were taken and introduced by the Layards who are kind as ever, +and I met old friends -- Lord Aberdare, Charles Bowen, and others. +While I write comes a deliciously fresh `bouquet' from Mrs. Bronson, +an American lady, -- in short we shall find a week or two amusing enough; +though -- where are the pinewoods, mountains and torrents, and wonderful air? +Venice is under a cloud, -- dull and threatening, -- +though we were apprehensive of heat, arriving, as we did, +ten days earlier than last year. . . .' +== + +The evening's programme was occasionally varied by a visit +to one of the theatres. The plays given were chiefly in the Venetian dialect, +and needed previous study for their enjoyment; but Mr. Browning assisted +at one musical performance which strongly appealed to his historical +and artistic sensibilities: that of the `Barbiere' of Paisiello +in the Rossini theatre and in the presence of Wagner, +which took place in the autumn of 1880. + +Although the manner of his sojourn in the Italian city +placed all the resources of resident life at his command, +Mr. Browning never abjured the active habits of the English traveller. +He daily walked with his sister, as he did in the mountains, +for walking's sake, as well as for the delight of what +his expeditions showed him; and the facilities which they supplied +for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mind +one of the great merits of his autumn residences in Italy. +He explored Venice in all directions, and learned to know its many points +of beauty and interest, as those cannot who believe it is only to be seen +from a gondola; and when he had visited its every corner, he fell back +on a favourite stroll along the Riva to the public garden and back again; +never failing to leave the house at about the same hour of the day. +Later still, when a friend's gondola was always at hand, +and air and sunshine were the one thing needful, he would be carried +to the Lido, and take a long stretch on its farther shore. + +The letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, from which I have already quoted, +concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place +at Saint-Pierre just before his departure, and in which +Mr. Browning's intuitions had played a striking part. + +== +`And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence? +Our journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of +the one mule of the village being requisitioned by the `Juge d'Instruction' +from Grenoble, come to enquire into a murder committed two days before. +My sister and I used once a day to walk for a couple of hours +up a mountain-road of the most lovely description, and stop at the summit +whence we looked down upon the minute hamlet of St.-Pierre d'Entremont, -- +even more secluded than our own: then we got back to our own aforesaid. +And in this Paradisial place, they found, yesterday week, +a murdered man -- frightfully mutilated -- who had been caught apparently +in the act of stealing potatoes in a field: such a crime had never occurred +in the memory of the oldest of our folk. Who was the murderer is the mystery +-- whether the field's owner -- in his irritation at discovering the robber, +-- or one of a band of similar `charbonniers' (for they suppose the man +to be a Piedmontese of that occupation) remains to be proved: +they began by imprisoning the owner, who denies his guilt energetically. +Now the odd thing is, that, either the day of, or after the murder, -- +as I and S. were looking at the utter solitude, I had the fancy +"What should I do if I suddenly came upon a dead body in this field? +Go and proclaim it -- and subject myself to all the vexations +inflicted by the French way of procedure (which begins by assuming +that you may be the criminal) -- or neglect an obvious duty, +and return silently." I, of course, saw that the former +was the only proper course, whatever the annoyance involved. +And, all the while, there was just about to be the very same incident +for the trouble of somebody.' +== + +Here the account breaks off; but writing again from the same place, +August 16, 1882, he takes up the suspended narrative with this question: + +`Did I tell you of what happened to me on the last day of my stay here +last year?' And after repeating the main facts continues as follows: + +== +`This morning, in the course of my walk, I entered into conversation +with two persons of whom I made enquiry myself. They said the accused man, +a simple person, had been locked up in a high chamber, -- +protesting his innocence strongly, -- and troubled in his mind +by the affair altogether and the turn it was taking, had profited +by the gendarme's negligence, and thrown himself out of the window -- +and so died, continuing to the last to protest as before. +My presentiment of what such a person might have to undergo +was justified you see -- though I should not in any case +have taken THAT way of getting out of the difficulty. +The man added, "it was not he who committed the murder, +but the companions of the man, an Italian charcoal-burner, +who owed him a grudge, killed him, and dragged him to the field -- +filling his sack with potatoes as if stolen, to give a likelihood +that the field's owner had caught him stealing and killed him, -- +so M. Perrier the greffier told me." Enough of this grim story. + + . . . . . + +`My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found: +"Vouz savez la croix au sommet de la colline? A cette distance de cela!" +That is precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me.' +== + +A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3 clearly refers +to some comment of Mrs. Fitz-Gerald's on the peculiar nature +of this presentiment: + +== +`No -- I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing +that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of ideas -- +CONTRARIES come into the mind as often as SIMILARITIES -- +and the peace and solitude readily called up the notion +of what would most jar with them. I have often thought of the trouble +that might have befallen me if poor Miss Smith's death had happened +the night before, when we were on the mountain alone together -- +or next morning when we were on the proposed excursion -- +only THEN we should have had companions.' +== + +The letter then passes to other subjects. + +== +`This is the fifth magnificent day -- like magnificence, +unfit for turning to much account -- for we cannot walk till sunset. +I had two hours' walk, or nearly, before breakfast, however: +It is the loveliest country I ever had experience of, +and we shall prolong our stay perhaps -- apart from the concern +for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be glad +to apprehend no long journey -- besides the annoyance +of having to pass Florence and Rome unvisited, for S.'s sake, I mean: +even Naples would have been with its wonderful environs +a tantalizing impracticability. + +`Your "Academy" came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electric eel, +as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about the Archbishop +who has always been strangely kind to me.' +== + +He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of October +with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the party assembled there +was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley's guests, +a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of a dangerous mountain +without a guide, and who lost her life in the experiment. + +A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show +that even in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning's patriotism +did not go to sleep. There had been already sufficient evidence +that his friendship did not; but it was not in the nature +of his mental activities that they should be largely absorbed by politics, +though he followed the course of his country's history +as a necessary part of his own life. It needed a crisis +like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irish struggle, +to arouse him to a full emotional participation in current events. +How deeply he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen. + +== +`If the George Smiths are still with you, give them my love, +and tell them we shall expect to see them at Venice, -- +which was not so likely to be the case when we were bound for Ischia. +As for Lady Wolseley -- one dares not pretend to vie with her +in anxiety just now; but my own pulses beat pretty strongly +when I open the day's newspaper -- which, by some new arrangement, reaches us, +oftener than not, on the day after publication. Where is your Bertie? +I had an impassioned letter, a fortnight ago, from a nephew of mine, +who is in the second division [battalion?] of the Black Watch; +he was ordered to Edinburgh, and the regiment not dispatched, after all, -- +it having just returned from India; the poor fellow wrote in his despair +"to know if I could do anything!" He may be wanted yet: though nothing +seems wanted in Egypt, so capital appears to be the management.' +== + +In 1879 Mr. Browning published the first series of his `Dramatic Idyls'; +and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration +through the public mind. In `La Saisiaz' and the accompanying poems +he had accomplished what was virtually a life's work. +For he was approaching the appointed limit of man's existence; +and the poetic, which had been nourished in him by the natural life -- +which had once outstripped its developments, but on the whole +remained subject to them -- had therefore, also, passed through +the successive phases of individual growth. He had been inspired +as dramatic poet by the one avowed conviction that little else is worth study +but the history of a soul; and outward act or circumstance +had only entered into his creations as condition or incident +of the given psychological state. His dramatic imagination had first, +however unconsciously, sought its materials in himself; +then gradually been projected into the world of men and women, +which his widening knowledge laid open to him; it is scarcely necessary +to say that its power was only fully revealed when it left +the remote regions of poetical and metaphysical self-consciousness, +to invoke the not less mysterious and far more searching utterance +of the general human heart. It was a matter of course +that in this expression of his dramatic genius, the intellectual and emotional +should exhibit the varying relations which are developed by the natural life: +that feeling should begin by doing the work of thought, as in `Saul', +and thought end by doing the work of feeling, as in `Fifine at the Fair'; +and that the two should alternate or combine in proportioned intensity +in such works of an intermediate period as `Cleon', `A Death in the Desert', +the `Epistle of Karshish', and `James Lee's Wife'; the sophistical ingenuities +of `Bishop Blougram', and `Sludge'; and the sad, appealing tenderness +of `Andrea del Sarto' and `The Worst of It'. + +It was also almost inevitable that so vigorous a genius +should sometimes falsify calculations based on the normal life. +The long-continued force and freshness of Mr. Browning's general faculties +was in itself a protest against them. We saw without surprise +that during the decade which produced `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau', +`Fifine at the Fair', and `Red Cotton Nightcap Country', he could give us +`The Inn Album', with its expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, +rarely equalled, in the whole range of his work: or those two +unique creations of airy fancy and passionate symbolic romance, +`Saint Martin's Summer', and `Numpholeptos'. It was no ground +for astonishment that the creative power in him should even ignore +the usual period of decline, and defy, so far as is humanly possible, +its natural laws of modification. But in the `Dramatic Idyls' +he did more than proceed with unflagging powers on a long-trodden, +distinctive course; he took a new departure. + +Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined +and worked out his new group of poems; he presented it +in a no less subtle and complex form. But he gave it the added force +of picturesque realization; and this by means of incidents +both powerful in themselves, and especially suited for its development. +It was only in proportion to this higher suggestiveness +that a startling situation ever seemed to him fit subject for poetry. +Where its interest and excitement exhausted themselves in the external facts, +it became, he thought, the property of the chronicler, +but supplied no material for the poet; and he often declined matter +which had been offered him for dramatic treatment because it belonged +to the more sensational category. + +It is part of the vital quality of the `Dramatic Idyls' that, in them, +the act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other. +We see the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimly striving +to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this +that the psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. +Such at least is the case in `Martin Relph', and the idealized Russian legend, +`Ivan Ivanovitch'. The grotesque tragedy of `Ned Bratts' has also +its marked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader kind. + +The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of `Idyls', +1880, and `Jocoseria', 1883. In `Ferishtah's Fancies', 1884, +Mr. Browning returned to his original manner, though carrying into it +something of the renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change. +The lyrics which alternate with its parables include some of the most tender, +most impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems. + +The moral and religious opinions conveyed in this later volume may be accepted +without reserve as Mr. Browning's own, if we subtract from them +the exaggerations of the figurative and dramatic form. +It is indeed easy to recognize in them the under currents +of his whole real and imaginative life. They have also on one or two points +an intrinsic value which will justify a later allusion. + + + + +Chapter 19 + +1881-1887 + + The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey -- + His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald -- + Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter -- Letter to Miss Hickey; `Strafford' -- + Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies -- Letters to Professor Knight -- + Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni -- The Goldoni Sonnet -- + Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni -- Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow -- + Mrs. Bloomfield Moore -- Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin -- + Loss of old Friends -- Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy -- + `Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day'. + + + +This Indian summer of Mr. Browning's genius coincided with +the highest manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, +any living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society +bearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. +The idea arose almost simultaneously in the mind of Dr., then Mr. Furnivall, +and of Miss E. H. Hickey. One day, in the July of 1881, +as they were on their way to Warwick Crescent to pay an appointed visit there, +Miss Hickey strongly expressed her opinion of the power and breadth +of Mr. Browning's work; and concluded by saying that +much as she loved Shakespeare, she found in certain aspects of Browning +what even Shakespeare could not give her. Mr. Furnivall replied to this +by asking what she would say to helping him to found a Browning Society; +and it then appeared that Miss Hickey had recently written to him a letter, +suggesting that he should found one; but that it had miscarried, +or, as she was disposed to think, not been posted. Being thus, at all events, +agreed as to the fitness of the undertaking, they immediately spoke of it +to Mr. Browning, who at first treated the project as a joke; +but did not oppose it when once he understood it to be serious. +His only proviso was that he should remain neutral +in respect to its fulfilment. He refused even to give Mr. Furnivall +the name or address of any friends, whose interest in himself or his work +might render their co-operation probable. + +This passive assent sufficed. A printed prospectus was now issued. +About two hundred members were soon secured. A committee was elected, +of which Mr. J. T. Nettleship, already well known as a Browning student, +was one of the most conspicuous members; and by the end of October +a small Society had come into existence, which held its +inaugural meeting in the Botanic Theatre of University College. +Mr. Furnivall, its principal founder, and responsible organizer, +was Chairman of the Committee, and Miss E. H. Hickey, the co-founder, +was Honorary Secretary. When, two or three years afterwards, +illness compelled her to resign this position, it was assumed +by Mr. J. Dykes Campbell. + +Although nothing could be more unpretending than the action +of this Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, +it did not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. +The formation of a Ruskin Society in the previous year +had already established a precedent for allowing a still living worker +to enjoy the fruits of his work, or, as some one termed it, +for making a man a classic during his lifetime. But this fact was not yet +generally known; and meanwhile a curious contradiction developed itself +in the public mind. The outer world of Mr. Browning's acquaintance +continued to condemn the too great honour which was being done to him; +from those of the inner circle he constantly received condolences +on being made the subject of proceedings which, according to them, +he must somehow regard as an offence. + +This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. +At the beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions +of the Society. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings +as to its future. He could not be sure that its action +would always be judicious, still less that it would be always successful. +He was prepared for its being laughed at, and for himself being included +in the laughter. He consented to its establishment for what seemed to him +the one unanswerable reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, +no just cause for forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn +between the kind of publicity which every writer seeks, which, +for good or evil, he had already obtained, and that which the Browning Society +was conferring on him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed, +and discussed `viva voce' and in print. That these proceedings +would now take place in other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, +through other organs than newspapers or magazines, by other and larger +groups of persons than those usually gathered round a dinner- or a tea-table, +involved no real change in the situation. In any case, +he had made himself public property; and those who thus organized +their study of him were exercising an individual right. +If his own rights had been assailed he would have guarded them also; +but the circumstances of the case precluded such a contingency. +And he had his reward. How he felt towards the Society +at the close of its first session is better indicated +in the following letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald than in the note to Mr. Yates +which Mr. Sharp has published, and which was written with more reserve and, +I believe, at a rather earlier date. Even the shade of condescension +which lingers about his words will have been effaced by subsequent experience; +and many letters written to Dr. Furnivall must, since then, +have attested his grateful and affectionate appreciation of kindness intended +and service done to him. + +== +. . . They always treat me gently in `Punch' -- why don't you do the same +by the Browning Society? I see you emphasize Miss Hickey's acknowledgement +of defects in time and want of rehearsal: but I look for no great perfection +in a number of kindly disposed strangers to me personally, +who try to interest people in my poems by singing and reading them. +They give their time for nothing, offer their little entertainment +for nothing, and certainly get next to nothing in the way of thanks -- +unless from myself who feel grateful to the faces I shall never see, +the voices I shall never hear. The kindest notices I have had, +or at all events those that have given me most pleasure, +have been educed by this Society -- A. Sidgwick's paper, +that of Professor Corson, Miss Lewis' article in this month's `Macmillan' -- +and I feel grateful for it all, for my part, -- and none the less +for a little amusement at the wonder of some of my friends +that I do not jump up and denounce the practices which must annoy me so much. +Oh! my `gentle Shakespeare', how well you felt and said -- +`never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.' +So, dear Lady, here is my duty and simplicity tendering itself to you, +with all affection besides, and I being ever yours, + R. Browning. +== + +That general disposition of the London world which left +the ranks of the little Society to be three-fourths recruited among persons, +many living at a distance, whom the poet did not know, +became also in its way a satisfaction. It was with him a matter of course, +though never of indifference, that his closer friends of both sexes +were among its members; it was one of real gratification +that they included from the beginning such men as Dean Boyle of Salisbury, +the Rev. Llewellyn Davies, George Meredith, and James Cotter Morison -- +that they enjoyed the sympathy and co-operation of such a one +as Archdeacon Farrar. But he had an ingenuous pride +in reading the large remainder of the Society's lists of names, +and pointing out the fact that there was not one among them +which he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, +`All these people care for me as a poet. No social interest, +no personal prepossession, has attracted them to my work.' +And when the unknown name was not only appended to a list; when it formed +the signature of a paper -- excellent or indifferent as might be -- +but in either case bearing witness to a careful and unobtrusive +study of his poems, by so much was the gratification increased. +He seldom weighed the intrinsic merit of such productions; +he did not read them critically. No man was ever more adverse +to the seeming ungraciousness of analyzing the quality of a gift. +In real life indeed this power of gratitude sometimes defeated its own end, +by neutralizing his insight into the motive or effort involved +in different acts of kindness, and placing them all successively +on the same plane. + +In the present case, however, an ungraduated acceptance +of the labour bestowed on him was part of the neutral attitude +which it was his constant endeavour to maintain. He always refrained +from noticing any erroneous statement concerning himself or his works +which might appear in the Papers of the Society: since, as he alleged, +if he once began to correct, he would appear to endorse +whatever he left uncorrected, and thus make himself responsible, +not only for any interpretation that might be placed on his poems, but, +what was far more serious, for every eulogium that was bestowed upon them. +He could not stand aloof as entirely as he or even his friends desired, +since it was usual with some members of the Society to seek from him +elucidations of obscure passages which, without these, it was declared, +would be a stumbling-block to future readers. But he disliked +being even to this extent drawn into its operation; and his help was, +I believe, less and less frequently invoked. Nothing could be more false +than the rumour which once arose that he superintended those performances +of his plays which took place under the direction of the Society. +Once only, and by the urgent desire of some of the actors, +did he witness a last rehearsal of one of them. + +It was also a matter of course that men and women brought together +by a pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning's work should often ignore +its authorized explanations, and should read and discuss it +in the light of personal impressions more congenial to their own mind; +and the various and circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem +did not serve to render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry +lies so largely in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions of it +have their positive value and also their relative truth; +and the intellectual friction which was thus created, +not only in the parent society, but in its offshoots in England and America, +was not their least important result. + +These Societies conferred, it need hardly be said, no less real benefits +on the public at large. They extended the sale of Mr. Browning's works, +and with it their distinct influence for intellectual and moral good. +They not only created in many minds an interest in these works, +but aroused the interest where it was latent, and gave it expression +where it had hitherto found no voice. One fault, alone, +could be charged against them; and this lay partly in the nature +of all friendly concerted action: they stirred a spirit of enthusiasm +in which it was not easy, under conditions equally genuine, +to distinguish the individual element from that which was due to contagion; +while the presence among us of the still living poet +often infused into that enthusiasm a vaguely emotional element, +which otherwise detracted from its intellectual worth. +But in so far as this was a drawback to the intended action of the Societies, +it was one only in the most negative sense; nor can we doubt, that, +to a certain extent, Mr. Browning's best influence was promoted by it. +The hysterical sensibilities which, for some years past, +he had unconsciously but not unfrequently aroused in the minds of women, +and even of men, were a morbid development of that influence, +which its open and systematic extension tended rather to diminish +than to increase. + +It is also a matter of history that Robert Browning had many +deep and constant admirers in England, and still more in America,* +long before this organized interest had developed itself. +Letters received from often remote parts of the United States +had been for many years a detail of his daily experience; +and even when they consisted of the request for an autograph, +an application to print selections from his works, or a mere expression +of schoolboy pertness or schoolgirl sentimentality, they bore witness +to his wide reputation in that country, and the high esteem +in which he was held there.** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter of Boston +had long, I believe, been conspicuous in the higher ranks of his disciples, +though they first occur in his correspondence at about this date. +I trust I may take for granted Mrs. Thaxter's permission +to publish a letter from her. + +-- +* The cheapening of his works in America, induced by the absence + of international copyright, accounts of course in some degree + for their wider diffusion, and hence earlier appreciation there. +** One of the most curious proofs of this was the Californian Railway + time-table edition of his poems. +-- + +== + Newtonville, Massachusetts: March 14, 1880. + +My dear Mr. Browning: + +Your note reached me this morning, but it belonged to my husband, +for it was he who wrote to you; so I gave it to him, +glad to put into his hands so precious a piece of manuscript, +for he has for you and all your work an enthusiastic appreciation +such as is seldom found on this planet: it is not possible +that the admiration of one mortal for another can exceed his feeling for you. +You might have written for him, + + I've a friend over the sea, + . . . . + It all grew out of the books I write, &c. + +You should see his fine wrath and scorn for the idiocy +that doesn't at once comprehend you! + +He knows every word you have ever written; long ago `Sordello' +was an open book to him from title-page to closing line, +and ALL you have printed since has been as eagerly and studiously devoured. +He reads you aloud (and his reading is a fine art) to crowds +of astonished people, he swears by you, he thinks no one save Shakspere +has a right to be mentioned in the same century with you. +You are the great enthusiasm of his life. + +Pardon me, you are smiling, I dare say. You hear any amount +of such things, doubtless. But a genuine living appreciation +is always worth having in this old world, it is like a strong fresh breeze +from off the brine, that puts a sense of life and power into a man. +You cannot be the worse for it. + Yours very sincerely, + Celia Thaxter. +== + +When Mr. Thaxter died, in February 1885, his son wrote to Mr. Browning +to beg of him a few lines to be inscribed on his father's tombstone. +The little poem by which the request was answered has not yet, I believe, +been published. + +== +`Written to be inscribed on the gravestone of Levi Thaxter.' + +Thou, whom these eyes saw never, -- say friends true +Who say my soul, helped onward by my song, +Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too? +I gave but of the little that I knew: +How were the gift requited, while along +Life's path I pace, could'st thou make weakness strong, +Help me with knowledge -- for Life's old, Death's new! + R. B. +April 19, '85. +== + +A publication which connected itself with the labours of the Society, +without being directly inspired by it, was the annotated `Strafford' +prepared by Miss Hickey for the use of students. It may be agreeable +to those who use the little work to know the estimate +in which Mr. Browning held it. He wrote as follows: + +== + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: February 15, 1884. + +Dear Miss Hickey, -- I have returned the Proofs by post, -- +nothing can be better than your notes -- and with a real wish to be of use, +I read them carefully that I might detect never so tiny a fault, -- +but I found none -- unless (to show you how minutely I searched,) +it should be one that by `thriving in your contempt,' I meant simply +`while you despise them, and for all that, they thrive and are powerful +to do you harm.' The idiom you prefer -- quite an authorized one -- +comes to much the same thing after all. + +You must know how much I grieve at your illness -- temporary as +I will trust it to be -- I feel all your goodness to me -- +or whatever in my books may be taken for me -- well, I wish you knew +how thoroughly I feel it -- and how truly I am and shall ever be + Yours affectionately, + Robert Browning. +== + +From the time of the foundation of the New Shakspere Society, +Mr. Browning was its president. In 1880 he became a member +of the Wordsworth Society. Two interesting letters to Professor Knight, +dated respectively 1880 and 1887, connect themselves +with the working of the latter; and, in spite of their distance in time, +may therefore be given together. The poem which formed the subject +of the first was `The Daisy';* the selection referred to in the second +was that made in 1888 by Professor Knight for the Wordsworth Society, +with the co-operation of Mr. Browning and other eminent literary men. + +-- +* That beginning `In youth from rock to rock, I went.' +-- + +== + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: July 9, '80. + +My dear Sir, -- You pay me a compliment in caring for my opinion -- +but, such as it is, a very decided one it must be. On every account, +your method of giving the original text, and subjoining in a note +the variations, each with its proper date, is incontestably preferable +to any other. It would be so, if the variations were even improvements -- +there would be pleasure as well as profit in seeing what was good +grow visibly better. But -- to confine ourselves to the single `proof' +you have sent me -- in every case the change is sadly for the worse: +I am quite troubled by such spoilings of passage after passage +as I should have chuckled at had I chanced upon them +in some copy pencil-marked with corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed, +they are nearly as wretched as the touchings-up of the `Siege of Corinth' +by the latter. If ever diabolic agency was caught at tricks +with `apostolic' achievement (see page 9) -- and `apostolic', +with no `profanity' at all, I esteem these poems to be -- +surely you may bid it `aroint' `about and all about' these desecrated stanzas +-- each of which, however, thanks to your piety, we may hail, I trust, +with a hearty + + Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain + Nor be less dear to future men + Than in old time! + + Believe me, my dear Sir, + Yours very sincerely, + Robert Browning. +== + +== + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: March 23, '87. + +Dear Professor Knight, -- I have seemed to neglect your commission +shamefully enough: but I confess to a sort of repugnance +to classifying the poems as even good and less good: because in my heart +I fear I should do it almost chronologically -- so immeasureably superior +seem to me the `first sprightly runnings'. Your selection +would appear to be excellent; and the partial admittance of the later work +prevents one from observing the too definitely distinguishing black line +between supremely good and -- well, what is fairly tolerable -- +from Wordsworth, always understand! I have marked a few of the early poems, +not included in your list -- I could do no other when my conscience tells me +that I never can be tired of loving them: while, with the best will +in the world, I could never do more than try hard to like them.* + +-- +* By `them' Mr. Browning clearly means the later poems, + and probably has omitted a few words which would have shown this. +-- + +You see, I go wholly upon my individual likings and distastes: +that other considerations should have their weight with other people +is natural and inevitable. + Ever truly yours, + Robert Browning. + +Many thanks for the volume just received -- that with the correspondence. +I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut away from `Dion'. +== + +In 1884 he was again invited, and again declined, to stand +for the Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews. +In the same year he received the LL.D. degree of the University of Edinburgh; +and in the following was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies +of that city.* During the few days spent there on the occasion +of his investiture, he was the guest of Professor Masson, +whose solicitous kindness to him is still warmly remembered in the family. + +-- +* This Association was instituted in 1833, and is a union + of literary and debating societies. It is at present composed of five: + the Dialectic, Scots Law, Diagnostic, Philosophical, and Philomathic. +-- + +The interest in Mr. Browning as a poet is beginning to spread in Germany. +There is room for wonder that it should not have done so before, +though the affinities of his genius are rather with the older +than with the more modern German mind. It is much more remarkable that, +many years ago, his work had already a sympathetic exponent in Italy. +Signor Nencioni, Professor of Literature in Florence, +had made his acquaintance at Siena, and was possibly first attracted to him +through his wife, although I never heard that it was so. +He was soon, however, fascinated by Mr. Browning's poetry, +and made it an object of serious study; he largely quoted from, +and wrote on it, in the Roman paper `Fanfulla della Domenica', +in 1881 and 1882; and published last winter what is, I am told, +an excellent article on the same subject, in the `Nuova Antologia'. +Two years ago he travelled from Rome to Venice (accompanied by Signor Placci), +for the purpose of seeing him. He is fond of reciting passages +from the works, and has even made attempts at translation: +though he understands them too well not to pronounce them, +what they are for every Latin language, untranslatable. + +In 1883 Mr. Browning added another link to the `golden' chain of verse +which united England and Italy. A statue of Goldoni was about to be erected +in Venice. The ceremonies of the occasion were to include +the appearance of a volume -- or album -- of appropriate poems; +and Cavaliere Molmenti, its intending editor, a leading member +of the `Erection Committee', begged Mr. Browning to contribute to it. +It was also desired that he should be present at the unveiling.* +He was unable to grant this request, but consented to write a poem. +This sonnet to Goldoni also deserves to be more widely known, +both for itself and for the manner of its production. Mr. Browning +had forgotten, or not understood, how soon the promise concerning it +must be fulfilled, and it was actually scribbled off while a messenger, +sent by Signor Molmenti, waited for it. + +-- +* It was, I think, during this visit to Venice that he assisted + at a no less interesting ceremony: the unveiling of a commemorative tablet + to Baldassaro Galuppi, in his native island of Burano. +-- + +== +Goldoni, -- good, gay, sunniest of souls, -- + Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine, -- + What though it just reflect the shade and shine +Of common life, nor render, as it rolls +Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for thy shoals + Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine + Secrets unsuited to that opaline +Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. +There throng the people: how they come and go + Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb, -- see, -- +On Piazza, Calle, under Portico + And over Bridge! Dear king of Comedy, +Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so, + Venice, and we who love her, all love thee! + +Venice, Nov. 27, 1883. +== + +A complete bibliography would take account of three other sonnets, +`The Founder of the Feast', 1884, `The Names', 1884, +and `Why I am a Liberal', 1886, to which I shall have occasion to refer; +but we decline insensibly from these on to the less important +or more fugitive productions which such lists also include, +and on which it is unnecessary or undesirable that any stress should be laid. + +In 1885 he was joined in Venice by his son. It was `Penini's' first return +to the country of his birth, his first experience of the city +which he had only visited in his nurse's arms; and his delight in it +was so great that the plan shaped itself in his father's mind of buying +a house there, which should serve as `pied-a-terre' for the family, +but more especially as a home for him. Neither the health nor the energies +of the younger Mr. Browning had ever withstood the influence +of the London climate; a foreign element was undoubtedly present +in his otherwise thoroughly English constitution. Everything now pointed +to his settling in Italy, and pursuing his artist life there, +only interrupting it by occasional visits to London and Paris. +His father entered into negotiations for the Palazzo Manzoni, +next door to the former Hotel de l'Univers; and the purchase was completed, +so far as he was concerned, before he returned to England. +The fact is related, and his own position towards it described +in a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow, written from Venice. + +== + Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, S. Moise: Nov. 15, '85. + +My two dear friends will have supposed, with plenty of reason, +that I never got the kind letter some weeks ago. When it came, +I was in the middle of an affair, conducted by letters of quite another kind, +with people abroad: and as I fancied that every next day might bring me news +very interesting to me and likely to be worth telling to the dear friends, +I waited and waited -- and only two days since did the matter come +to a satisfactory conclusion -- so, as the Irish song has it, +`Open your eyes and die with surprise' when I inform you +that I have purchased the Manzoni Palace here, on the Canal Grande, +of its owner, Marchese Montecucculi, an Austrian and an absentee -- +hence the delay of communication. I did this purely for Pen -- +who became at once simply infatuated with the city which won my whole heart +long before he was born or thought of. I secure him a perfect domicile, +every facility for his painting and sculpture, and a property fairly worth, +even here and now, double what I gave for it -- such is the virtue +in these parts of ready money! I myself shall stick to London -- +which has been so eminently good and gracious to me -- so long as God permits; +only, when the inevitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body -- +(I shall not believe in his reaching my soul and proper self) -- +there will be a capital retreat provided: and meantime +I shall be able to `take mine ease in mine own inn' whenever so minded. +There, my dear friends! I trust now to be able to leave very shortly; +the main business cannot be formally concluded before two months at least -- +through the absence of the Marchese, -- who left at once +to return to his duties as commander of an Austrian ship; +but the necessary engagement to sell and buy at a specified price is made +in due legal form, and the papers will be sent to me in London for signature. +I hope to get away the week after next at latest, -- +spite of the weather in England which to-day's letters report as `atrocious', +-- and ours, though variable, is in the main very tolerable +and sometimes perfect; for all that, I yearn to be at home in poor +Warwick Crescent, which must do its best to make me forget my new abode. +I forget you don't know Venice. Well then, the Palazzo Manzoni is situate +on the Grand Canal, and is described by Ruskin, -- to give no other authority, +-- as `a perfect and very rich example of Byzantine Renaissance: +its warm yellow marbles are magnificent.' And again -- `an exquisite example +(of Byzantine Renaissance) as applied to domestic architecture.' +So testify the `Stones of Venice'. But we will talk about the place, +over a photograph, when I am happy enough to be with you again. + +Of Venetian gossip there is next to none. We had an admirable +Venetian Company, -- using the dialect, -- at the Goldoni Theatre. +The acting of Zago, in his various parts, and Zenon-Palladini, +in her especial character of a Venetian piece of volubility and impulsiveness +in the shape of a servant, were admirable indeed. The manager, Gallina, +is a playwright of much reputation, and gave us some dozen of his own pieces, +mostly good and clever. S. is very well, -- much improved in health: +we walk sufficiently in this city where walking is accounted impossible +by those who never attempt it. Have I tired your good temper? +No! you ever wished me well, and I love you both with my whole heart. +S.'s love goes with mine -- who am ever yours + Robert Browning. +== + +He never, however, owned the Manzoni Palace. The Austrian gentlemen* +whose property it was, put forward, at the last moment, +unexpected and to his mind unreasonable claims; and he was preparing +to contest the position, when a timely warning induced him +to withdraw from it altogether. The warning proceeded from his son, +who had remained on the spot, and was now informed on competent authority +that the foundations of the house were insecure. + +-- +* Two or three brothers. +-- + +In the early summer of 1884, and again in 1886, Miss Browning had +a serious illness; and though she recovered, in each case completely, +and in the first rapidly, it was considered desirable +that she should not travel so far as usual from home. +She and her brother therefore accepted for the August and September of 1884 +the urgent invitation of an American friend, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, +to stay with her at a villa which she rented for some seasons at St. Moritz. +Mr. Browning was delighted with the Engadine, where the circumstances +of his abode, and the thoughtful kindness of his hostess, +allowed him to enjoy the benefits of comparative civilization +together with almost perfect repose. The weather that year +was brilliant until the end of September, if not beyond it; +and his letters tell the old pleasant story of long daily walks +and a general sense of invigoration. One of these, +written to Mr. and Mrs. Skirrow, also contains some pungent remarks +on contemporary events, with an affectionate allusion +to one of the chief actors in them. + +== +`Anyhow, I have the sincerest hope that Wolseley may get done as soon, +and kill as few people, as possible, -- keeping himself safe and sound -- +brave dear fellow -- for the benefit of us all.' +== + +He also speaks with great sympathy of the death of Mr. Charles Sartoris, +which had just taken place at St.-Moritz. + +In 1886, Miss Browning was not allowed to leave England; +and she and Mr. Browning established themselves for the autumn +at the Hand Hotel at Llangollen, where their old friends, +Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, would be within easy reach. +Mr. Browning missed the exhilarating effects of the Alpine air; +but he enjoyed the peaceful beauty of the Welsh valley, +and the quiet and comfort of the old-fashioned English inn. +A new source of interest also presented itself to him in some aspects +of the life of the English country gentleman. He was struck +by the improvements effected by its actual owner* on a neighbouring estate, +and by the provisions contained in them for the comfort of both +the men and the animals under his care; and he afterwards made, +in reference to them, what was for a professing Liberal, +a very striking remark: `Talk of abolishing that class of men! +They are the salt of the earth!' Every Sunday afternoon +he and his sister drank tea -- weather permitting -- on the lawn +with their friends at Brintysilio; and he alludes gracefully to these meetings +in a letter written in the early summer of 1888, when Lady Martin +had urged him to return to Wales. + +-- +* I believe a Captain Best. +-- + +The poet left another and more pathetic remembrance of himself +in the neighbourhood of Llangollen: his weekly presence +at the afternoon Sunday service in the parish church of Llantysilio. +Churchgoing was, as I have said, no part of his regular life. +It was no part of his life in London. But I do not think he ever failed in it +at the Universities or in the country. The assembling for prayer +meant for him something deeper in both the religious and the human sense, +where ancient learning and piety breathed through the consecrated edifice, +or where only the figurative `two or three' were `gathered together' +within it. A memorial tablet now marks the spot at which on this occasion +the sweet grave face and the venerable head were so often seen. +It has been placed by the direction of Lady Martin on the adjoining wall. + +It was in the September of this year that Mr. Browning heard +of the death of M. Joseph Milsand. This name represented for him +one of the few close friendships which were to remain until the end, +unclouded in fact and in remembrance; and although some weight may be given +to those circumstances of their lives which precluded all possibility +of friction and risk of disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, +and Mr. Browning's unfailing powers of appreciation would, +in all possible cases, have maintained the bond intact. +The event was at the last sudden, but happily not quite unexpected. + +Many other friends had passed by this time out of the poet's life -- +those of a younger, as well as his own and an older generation. +Miss Haworth died in 1883. Charles Dickens, with whom he had remained +on the most cordial terms, had walked between him and his son +at Thackeray's funeral, to receive from him, only seven years later, +the same pious office. Lady Augusta Stanley, the daughter of his old friend, +Lady Elgin, was dead, and her husband, the Dean of Westminster. +So also were `Barry Cornwall' and John Forster, Alfred Domett, +and Thomas Carlyle, Mr. Cholmondeley and Lord Houghton; others still, +both men and women, whose love for him might entitle them to a place +in his Biography, but whom I could at most only mention by name. + +For none of these can his feeling have been more constant +or more disinterested than that which bound him to Carlyle. +He visited him at Chelsea in the last weary days of his long life, +as often as their distance from each other and his own engagements allowed. +Even the man's posthumous self-disclosures scarcely availed to destroy +the affectionate reverence which he had always felt for him. +He never ceased to defend him against the charge of unkindness to his wife, +or to believe that in the matter of their domestic unhappiness +she was the more responsible of the two.* Yet Carlyle had never rendered him +that service, easy as it appears, which one man of letters +most justly values from another: that of proclaiming the admiration +which he privately expresses for his works. The fact was incomprehensible +to Mr. Browning -- it was so foreign to his own nature; +and he commented on it with a touch, though merely a touch, of bitterness, +when repeating to a friend some almost extravagant eulogium +which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. +`If only,' he said, `those words had been ever repeated in public, +what good they might have done me!' + +-- +* He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I believe + little liking was lost between them. He told a comical story of how + he had once, unintentionally but rather stupidly, annoyed her. + She had asked him, as he was standing by her tea-table, + to put the kettle back on the fire. He took it out of her hands, + but, preoccupied by the conversation he was carrying on, deposited it + on the hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see + that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never ceased to think + that he had a mischievous motive for doing it. +-- + +In the spring of 1886, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent +to the Royal Academy, rendered vacant by the death of Lord Houghton. +He had long been on very friendly terms with the leading Academicians, +and a constant guest at the Banquet; and his fitness for the office +admitted of no doubt. But his nomination by the President, +and the manner in which it was ratified by the Council and general body, +gave him sincere pleasure. + +Early in 1887, the `Parleyings' appeared. Their author is still +the same Robert Browning, though here and there visibly touched by +the hand of time. Passages of sweet or majestic music, or of exquisite fancy, +alternate with its long stretches of argumentative thought; +and the light of imagination still plays, however fitfully, +over statements of opinion to which constant repetition has given a suggestion +of commonplace. But the revision of the work caused him unusual trouble. +The subjects he had chosen strained his powers of exposition; +and I think he often tried to remedy by mere verbal correction, +what was a defect in the logical arrangement of his ideas. +They would slide into each other where a visible dividing line was required. +The last stage of his life was now at hand; and the vivid return of fancy +to his boyhood's literary loves was in pathetic, perhaps not quite accidental, +coincidence with the fact. It will be well to pause +at this beginning of his decline, and recall so far as possible +the image of the man who lived, and worked, and loved, and was loved among us, +during that brief old age, and the lengthened period of level strength +which had preceded it. The record already given of his life and work +supplies the outline of the picture; but a few more personal details +are required for its completion. + + + + +Chapter 20 + + Constancy to Habit -- Optimism -- Belief in Providence -- + Political Opinions -- His Friendships -- Reverence for Genius -- + Attitude towards his Public -- Attitude towards his Work -- + Habits of Work -- His Reading -- Conversational Powers -- + Impulsiveness and Reserve -- Nervous Peculiarities -- His Benevolence -- + His Attitude towards Women. + + + +When Mr. Browning wrote to Miss Haworth, in the July of 1861, he had said: +`I shall still grow, I hope; but my root is taken, and remains.' +He was then alluding to a special offshoot of feeling and association, +on the permanence of which it is not now necessary to dwell; +but it is certain that he continued growing up to a late age, +and that the development was only limited by those general roots, +those fixed conditions of his being, which had predetermined its form. +This progressive intellectual vitality is amply represented in his works; +it also reveals itself in his letters in so far as I have been allowed +to publish them. I only refer to it to give emphasis to a contrasted +or corresponding characteristic: his aversion to every thought of change. +I have spoken of his constancy to all degrees of friendship and love. +What he loved once he loved always, from the dearest man or woman +to whom his allegiance had been given, to the humblest piece of furniture +which had served him. It was equally true that what he had done once +he was wont, for that very reason, to continue doing. +The devotion to habits of feeling extended to habits of life; +and although the lower constancy generally served the purposes of the higher, +it also sometimes clashed with them. It conspired with +his ready kindness of heart to make him subject to circumstances +which at first appealed to him through that kindness, +but lay really beyond its scope. This statement, it is true, +can only fully apply to the latter part of his life. +His powers of reaction must originally have been stronger, +as well as freer from the paralysis of conflicting motive and interest. +The marked shrinking from effort in any untried direction, +which was often another name for his stability, could scarcely have coexisted +with the fresher and more curious interest in men and things; +we know indeed from recorded facts that it was a feeling of later growth; +and it visibly increased with the periodical nervous exhaustion +of his advancing years. I am convinced, nevertheless, that, +when the restiveness of boyhood had passed away, Mr. Browning's strength +was always more passive than active; that he habitually +made the best of external conditions rather than tried to change them. +He was a `fighter' only by the brain. And on this point, though on this only, +his work is misleading. + +The acquiescent tendency arose in some degree from two equally prominent +characteristics of Mr. Browning's nature: his optimism, +and his belief in direct Providence; and these again represented +a condition of mind which was in certain respects a quality, +but must in others be recognized as a defect. It disposed him too much +to make a virtue of happiness. It tended also to the ignoring or denying of +many incidental possibilities, and many standing problems of human suffering. +The first part of this assertion is illustrated by `The Two Poets of Croisic', +in which Mr. Browning declares that, other conditions being equal, +the greater poet will have been he who led the happier life, +who most completely -- and we must take this in the human +as well as religious sense -- triumphed over suffering. +The second has its proof in the contempt for poetic melancholy +which flashes from the supposed utterance of Shakespeare in `At the Mermaid'; +its negative justification in the whole range of his work. + +Such facts may be hard to reconcile with others already known +of Mr. Browning's nature, or already stated concerning it; +but it is in the depths of that nature that the solution of this, +as of more than one other anomaly, must be sought. It is true +that remembered pain dwelt longer with him than remembered pleasure. +It is true that the last great sorrow of his life was long felt +and cherished by him as a religion, and that it entered as such +into the courage with which he first confronted it. It is no less true +that he directly and increasingly cultivated happiness; +and that because of certain sufferings which had been connected with them, +he would often have refused to live his happiest days again. + +It seems still harder to associate defective human sympathy +with his kind heart and large dramatic imagination, +though that very imagination was an important factor in the case. +It forbade the collective and mathematical estimate of human suffering, +which is so much in favour with modern philanthropy, +and so untrue a measure for the individual life; and he indirectly condemns it +in `Ferishtah's Fancies' in the parable of `Bean Stripes'. +But his dominant individuality also barred the recognition +of any judgment or impression, any thought or feeling, +which did not justify itself from his own point of view. +The barrier would melt under the influence of a sympathetic mood, +as it would stiffen in the atmosphere of disagreement. It would yield, +as did in his case so many other things, to continued indirect pressure, +whether from his love of justice, the strength of his attachments, +or his power of imaginative absorption. But he was bound +by the conditions of an essentially creative nature. The subjectiveness, +if I may for once use that hackneyed word, had passed out of his work +only to root itself more strongly in his life. He was self-centred, +as the creative nature must inevitably be. He appeared, for this reason, +more widely sympathetic in his works than in his life, though even +in the former certain grounds of vicarious feeling remained untouched. +The sympathy there displayed was creative and obeyed its own law. +That which was demanded from him by reality was responsive, +and implied submission to the law of other minds. + +Such intellectual egotism is unconnected with moral selfishness, +though it often unconsciously does its work. Were it otherwise, +I should have passed over in silence this aspect, comprehensive though it is, +of Mr. Browning's character. He was capable of the largest self-sacrifice +and of the smallest self-denial; and would exercise either +whenever love or duty clearly pointed the way. He would, he believed, +cheerfully have done so at the command, however arbitrary, of a Higher Power; +he often spoke of the absence of such injunction, whether to +endurance or action, as the great theoretical difficulty of life +for those who, like himself, rejected or questioned +the dogmatic teachings of Christianity. This does not mean that he ignored +the traditional moralities which have so largely taken their place. +They coincided in great measure with his own instincts; +and few occasions could have arisen in which they would not be to him +a sufficient guide. I may add, though this is a digression, +that he never admitted the right of genius to defy them; +when such a right had once been claimed for it in his presence, +he rejoined quickly, `That is an error! NOBLESSE OBLIGE.' +But he had difficulty in acknowledging any abstract law +which did not derive from a Higher Power; and this fact may have been +at once cause and consequence of the special conditions of his own mind. +All human or conventional obligation appeals finally +to the individual judgment; and in his case this could easily be obscured +by the always militant imagination, in regard to any subject +in which his feelings were even indirectly concerned. No one saw +more justly than he, when the object of vision was general or remote. +Whatever entered his personal atmosphere encountered a refracting medium +in which objects were decomposed, and a succession of details, +each held as it were close to the eye, blocked out the larger view. + +We have seen, on the other hand, that he accepted imperfect knowledge +as part of the discipline of experience. It detracted in no sense +from his conviction of direct relations with the Creator. This was indeed +the central fact of his theology, as the absolute individual existence +had been the central fact of his metaphysics; and when he described +the fatal leap in `Red Cotton Nightcap Country' as a frantic appeal +to the Higher Powers for the `sign' which the man's religion did not afford, +and his nature could not supply, a special dramatic sympathy was at work +within him. The third part of the epilogue to `Dramatis Personae' +represented his own creed; though this was often accentuated +in the sense of a more personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery, +than the poem conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjective +idealist philosopher were curiously blended in his composition. + +The transition seems violent from this old-world religion +to any system of politics applicable to the present day. +They were, nevertheless, closely allied in Mr. Browning's mind. +His politics were, so far as they went, the practical aspect of his religion. +Their cardinal doctrine was the liberty of individual growth; +removal of every barrier of prejudice or convention by which +it might still be checked. He had been a Radical in youth, +and probably in early manhood; he remained, in the truest sense of the word, +a Liberal; and his position as such was defined in the sonnet prefixed in 1886 +to Mr. Andrew Reid's essay, `Why I am a Liberal', and bearing the same name. +Its profession of faith did not, however, necessarily bind him +to any political party. It separated him from all the newest developments +of so-called Liberalism. He respected the rights of property. +He was a true patriot, hating to see his country plunged into aggressive wars, +but tenacious of her position among the empires of the world. +He was also a passionate Unionist; although the question +of our political relations with Ireland weighed less with him, +as it has done with so many others, than those considerations +of law and order, of honesty and humanity, which have been +trampled under foot in the name of Home Rule. It grieved and surprised him +to find himself on this subject at issue with so many valued friends; +and no pain of Lost Leadership was ever more angry or more intense, +than that which came to him through the defection of a great statesman +whom he had honoured and loved, from what he believed to be the right cause. + +The character of Mr. Browning's friendships reveals itself +in great measure in even a simple outline of his life. +His first friends of his own sex were almost exclusively men of letters, +by taste if not by profession; the circumstances of his entrance into society +made this a matter of course. In later years he associated on cordial terms +with men of very various interests and professions; +and only writers of conspicuous merit, whether in prose or poetry, +attracted him as such. No intercourse was more congenial to him +than that of the higher class of English clergymen. +He sympathized in their beliefs even when he did not share them. +Above all he loved their culture; and the love of culture in general, +of its old classic forms in particular, was as strong in him +as if it had been formed by all the natural and conventional associations +of a university career. He had hearty friends and appreciators +among the dignitaries of the Church -- successive Archbishops and Bishops, +Deans of Westminster and St. Paul's. They all knew the value +of the great freelance who fought like the gods of old with the regular army. +No name, however, has been mentioned in the poet's family more frequently +or with more affection than that of the Rev. J. D. W. Williams, +Vicar of Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. The mutual acquaintance, which was made +through Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, +was prepared by Mr. Williams' great love for his poems, +of which he translated many into Latin and Greek; but I am convinced +that Mr. Browning's delight in his friend's classical attainments +was quite as great as his gratification in the tribute +he himself derived from them. + +His love of genius was a worship: and in this we must include his whole life. +Nor was it, as this feeling so often is, exclusively exercised upon the past. +I do not suppose his more eminent contemporaries ever quite knew how generous +his enthusiasm for them had been, how free from any under-current of envy, +or impulse to avoidable criticism. He could not endure +even just censure of one whom he believed, or had believed to be great. +I have seen him wince under it, though no third person was present, +and heard him answer, `Don't! don't!' as if physical pain +were being inflicted on him. In the early days he would make his friend, +M. de Monclar, draw for him from memory the likenesses of famous writers +whom he had known in Paris; the sketches thus made +of George Sand and Victor Hugo are still in the poet's family. +A still more striking and very touching incident refers to one of the winters, +probably the second, which he spent in Paris. He was one day +walking with little Pen, when Beranger came in sight, +and he bade the child `run up to' or `run past that gentleman, +and put his hand for a moment upon him.' This was a great man, +he afterwards explained, and he wished his son to be able by-and-by +to say that if he had not known, he had at all events touched him. +Scientific genius ranked with him only second to the poetical. + +Mr. Browning's delicate professional sympathies justified some sensitiveness +on his own account; but he was, I am convinced, as free from this quality +as a man with a poet-nature could possibly be. It may seem hazardous +to conjecture how serious criticism would have affected him. +Few men so much `reviewed' have experienced so little. +He was by turns derided or ignored, enthusiastically praised, +zealously analyzed and interpreted: but the independent judgment +which could embrace at once the quality of his mind and its defects, +is almost absent -- has been so at all events during later years -- +from the volumes which have been written about him. I am convinced, +nevertheless, that he would have accepted serious, even adverse criticism, +if it had borne the impress of unbiassed thought and genuine sincerity. +It could not be otherwise with one in whom the power of reverence +was so strongly marked. + +He asked but one thing of his reviewers, as he asked but one thing +of his larger public. The first demand is indicated in a letter +to Mrs. Frank Hill, of January 31, 1884. + +== +Dear Mrs. Hill, -- Could you befriend me? The `Century' prints +a little insignificance of mine -- an impromptu sonnet -- +but prints it CORRECTLY. The `Pall Mall' pleases to extract it -- +and produces what I enclose: one line left out, and a note of admiration (!) +turned into an I, and a superfluous `the' stuck in -- +all these blunders with the correctly printed text before it! +So does the charge of unintelligibility attach itself to your poor friend -- +who can kick nobody. + Robert Browning. +== + +The carelessness often shown in the most friendly quotation +could hardly be absent from that which was intended to support a hostile view; +and the only injustice of which he ever complained, +was what he spoke of as falsely condemning him out of his own mouth. +He used to say: `If a critic declares that any poem of mine +is unintelligible, the reader may go to it and judge for himself; +but, if it is made to appear unintelligible by a passage extracted from it +and distorted by misprints, I have no redress.' He also failed to realize +those conditions of thought, and still more of expression, +which made him often on first reading difficult to understand; +and as the younger generation of his admirers often deny those difficulties +where they exist, as emphatically as their grandfathers proclaimed them +where they did not, public opinion gave him little help in the matter. + +The second (unspoken) request was in some sense an antithesis to the first. +Mr. Browning desired to be read accurately but not literally. +He deprecated the constant habit of reading him into his work; +whether in search of the personal meaning of a given passage or poem, +or in the light of a foregone conclusion as to what that meaning must be. +The latter process was that generally preferred, because the individual mind +naturally seeks its own reflection in the poet's work, +as it does in the facts of nature. It was stimulated by the investigations +of the Browning Societies, and by the partial familiarity with his actual life +which constantly supplied tempting, if untrustworthy clues. It grew out of +the strong personal as well as literary interest which he inspired. +But the tendency to listen in his work for a single recurrent note +always struck him as analogous to the inspection of a picture gallery +with eyes blind to every colour but one; and the act of sympathy +often involved in this mode of judgment was neutralized for him +by the limitation of his genius which it presupposed. +His general objection to being identified with his works +is set forth in `At the Mermaid', and other poems of the same volume, +in which it takes the form of a rather captious protest +against inferring from the poet any habit or quality of the man; +and where also, under the impulse of the dramatic mood, +he enforces the lesson by saying more than he can possibly mean. +His readers might object that his human personality was so often plainly +revealed in his poetic utterance (whether or not that of Shakespeare was), +and so often also avowed by it, that the line which divided them +became impossible to draw. But he again would have rejoined +that the Poet could never express himself with any large freedom, +unless a fiction of impersonality were granted to him. +He might also have alleged, he often did allege, that in his case the fiction +would hold a great deal of truth; since, except in the rarest cases, +the very fact of poetic, above all of dramatic reproduction, +detracts from the reality of the thought or feeling reproduced. +It introduces the alloy of fancy without which the fixed outlines +of even living experience cannot be welded into poetic form. +He claimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should allow +for the action in it of the constructive imagination, in the exercise of which +all deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, which showed itself +in seeking historical authority for every character or incident +which he employed by way of illustration, was especially irritating to him. + +I may (as indeed I must) concede this much, without impugning +either the pleasure or the gratitude with which he recognized +the increasing interest in his poems, and, if sometimes exhibited +in a mistaken form, the growing appreciation of them. + +There was another and more striking peculiarity in Mr. Browning's attitude +towards his works: his constant conviction that the latest must be the best, +because the outcome of the fullest mental experience, +and of the longest practice in his art. He was keenly alive +to the necessary failings of youthful literary production; +he also practically denied to it that quality which so often places it +at an advantage over that, not indeed of more mature manhood, +but at all events of advancing age. There was much in his own experience +to blind him to the natural effects of time; it had been +a prolonged triumph over them. But the delusion, in so far as it was one, +lay deeper than the testimony of such experience, and would I think +have survived it. It was the essence of his belief that the mind +is superior to physical change; that it may be helped or hindered +by its temporary alliance with the body, but will none the less outstrip it +in their joint course; and as intellect was for him the life of poetry, +so was the power of poetry independent of bodily progress and bodily decline. +This conviction pervaded his life. He learned, though happily very late, +to feel age an impediment; he never accepted it as a disqualification. + +He finished his work very carefully. He had the better right to resent +any garbling of it, that this habitually took place through his punctuation, +which was always made with the fullest sense of its significance +to any but the baldest style, and of its special importance to his own. +I have heard him say: `People accuse me of not taking pains! +I take nothing BUT pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrast +between the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse +to which the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labour +which he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit +must have grown upon him; it was natural that it should do so +as thought gained the ascendency over emotion in what he had to say. +Mrs. Browning told Mr. Val Prinsep that her husband `worked at a great rate;' +and this fact probably connected itself with the difficulty he then found +in altering the form or wording of any particular phrase; +he wrote most frequently under that lyrical inspiration +in which the idea and the form are least separable from each other. +We know, however, that in the later editions of his old work +he always corrected where he could; and if we notice the changed lines +in `Paracelsus' or `Sordello', as they appear in the edition of 1863, +or the slighter alterations indicated for the last reprint of his works, +we are struck by the care evinced in them for greater +smoothness of expression, as well as for greater accuracy and force. + +He produced less rapidly in later life, though he could throw off +impromptu verses, whether serious or comical, with the utmost ease. +His work was then of a kind which required more deliberation; +and other claims had multiplied upon his time and thoughts. +He was glad to have accomplished twenty or thirty lines in a morning. +After lunch-time, for many years, he avoided, when possible, +even answering a note. But he always counted a day lost +on which he had not written something; and in those last years +on which we have yet to enter, he complained bitterly of the quantity +of ephemeral correspondence which kept him back from his proper work. +He once wrote, on the occasion of a short illness which confined him +to the house, `All my power of imagination seems gone. I might as well +be in bed!' He repeatedly determined to write a poem every day, +and once succeeded for a fortnight in doing so. He was then in Paris, +preparing `Men and Women'. `Childe Roland' and `Women and Roses' +were among those produced on this plan; the latter having been suggested +by some flowers sent to his wife. The lyrics in `Ferishtah's Fancies' +were written, I believe, on consecutive days; and the intention renewed itself +with his last work, though it cannot have been maintained. + +He was not as great a reader in later as in earlier years; +he had neither time nor available strength to be so if he had wished; +and he absorbed almost unconsciously every item which added itself +to the sum of general knowledge. Books had indeed served for him +their most important purpose when they had satisfied the first curiosities +of his genius, and enabled it to establish its independence. +His mind was made up on the chief subjects of contemporary thought, +and what was novel or controversial in its proceeding +had no attraction for him. He would read anything, short of an English novel, +to a friend whose eyes required this assistance; but such pleasure +as he derived from the act was more often sympathetic than spontaneous, +even when he had not, as he often had, selected for it +a book which he already knew. In the course of his last decade +he devoted himself for a short time to the study of Spanish and Hebrew. +The Spanish dramatists yielded him a fund of new enjoyment; and he delighted +in his power of reading Hebrew in its most difficult printed forms. +He also tried, but with less result, to improve his knowledge of German. +His eyesight defied all obstacles of bad paper and ancient type, +and there was anxiety as well as pleasure to those about him +in his unfailing confidence in its powers. He never wore spectacles, +nor had the least consciousness of requiring them. He would read +an old closely printed volume by the waning light of a winter afternoon, +positively refusing to use a lamp. Indeed his preference +of the faintest natural light to the best that could be artificially produced +was perhaps the one suggestion of coming change. He used for all purposes +a single eye; for the two did not combine in their action, +the right serving exclusively for near, the left for distant objects. +This was why in walking he often closed the right eye; +while it was indispensable to his comfort in reading, +not only that the light should come from the right side, +but that the left should be shielded from any luminous object, like the fire, +which even at the distance of half the length of a room +would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near sight. + +His literary interest became increasingly centred on records of the lives +of men and women; especially of such men and women as he had known; +he was generally curious to see the newly published biographies, +though often disappointed by them. He would also read, +even for his amusement, good works of French or Italian fiction. +His allegiance to Balzac remained unshaken, though he was +conscious of lengthiness when he read him aloud. This author's +deep and hence often poetic realism was, I believe, bound up +with his own earliest aspirations towards dramatic art. +His manner of reading aloud a story which he already knew +was the counterpart of his own method of construction. +He would claim his listener's attention for any apparently unimportant fact +which had a part to play in it: he would say: `Listen to this description: +it will be important. Observe this character: you will see a great deal more +of him or her.' We know that in his own work nothing was thrown away; +no note was struck which did not add its vibration to the general utterance +of the poem; and his habitual generosity towards a fellow-worker +prompted him to seek and recognize the same quality, +even in productions where it was less conspicuous than in his own. +The patient reading which he required for himself was justified +by that which he always demanded for others; and he claimed it less +in his own case for his possible intricacies of thought or style, +than for that compactness of living structure in which +every detail or group of details was essential to the whole, +and in a certain sense contained it. He read few things with so much pleasure +as an occasional chapter in the Old Testament. + +Mr. Browning was a brilliant talker; he was admittedly more a talker +than a conversationalist. But this quality had nothing in common +with self-assertion or love of display. He had too much respect +for the acquirements of other men to wish to impose silence on those +who were competent to speak; and he had great pleasure in listening +to a discussion on any subject in which he was interested, +and on which he was not specially informed. He never willingly monopolized +the conversation; but when called upon to take a prominent part in it, +either with one person or with several, the flow of remembered knowledge +and revived mental experience, combined with the ingenuous eagerness +to vindicate some point in dispute would often carry him away; +while his hearers, nearly as often, allowed him to proceed +from absence of any desire to interrupt him. This great mental fertility +had been prepared by the wide reading and thorough assimilation +of his early days; and it was only at a later, and in certain respects +less vigorous period, that its full bearing could be seen. +His memory for passing occurrences, even such as had impressed him, +became very weak; it was so before he had grown really old; and he would +urge this fact in deprecation of any want of kindness or sympathy, +which a given act of forgetfulness might seem to involve. +He had probably always, in matters touching his own life, +the memory of feelings more than that of facts. I think this has been +described as a peculiarity of the poet-nature; and though this memory +is probably the more tenacious of the two, it is no safe guide +to the recovery of facts, still less to that of their order and significance. +Yet up to the last weeks, even the last conscious days of his life, +his remembrance of historical incident, his aptness of literary illustration, +never failed him. His dinner-table anecdotes supplied, of course, no measure +for this spontaneous reproductive power; yet some weight must be given +to the number of years during which he could abound in such stories, +and attest their constant appropriateness by not repeating them. + +This brilliant mental quality had its drawback, on which +I have already touched in a rather different connection: +the obstacle which it created to even serious and private conversation +on any subject on which he was not neutral. Feeling, imagination, +and the vividness of personal points of view, constantly thwarted +the attempt at a dispassionate exchange of ideas. But the balance +often righted itself when the excitement of the discussion was at an end; +and it would even become apparent that expressions or arguments +which he had passed over unheeded, or as it seemed unheard, +had stored themselves in his mind and borne fruit there. + +I think it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combined +impulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habitually reticent +where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsiveness and +the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. +The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their sensibility. +In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified each other. +But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally its conscious motives, +some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from this point of view +it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more expansive quality. +He never, however, intentionally withheld from others such things +as it concerned them to know. His intellectual and religious convictions +were open to all who seriously sought them; and if, even on such points, +he did not appear communicative, it was because he took more interest +in any subject of conversation which did not directly centre in himself. + +Setting aside the delicacies which tend to self-concealment, +and for which he had been always more or less conspicuous; +excepting also the pride which would co-operate with them, +all his inclinations were in the direction of truth; +there was no quality which he so much loved and admired. +He thought aloud wherever he could trust himself to do so. +Impulse predominated in all the active manifestations of his nature. +The fiery child and the impatient boy had left their traces in the man; +and with them the peculiar childlike quality which the man of genius +never outgrows, and which, in its mingled waywardness and sweetness, +was present in Robert Browning till almost his dying day. +There was also a recurrent touch of hardness, distinct from +the comparatively ungenial mood of his earlier years of widowhood; +and this, like his reserve, seemed to conflict with his general character, +but in reality harmonized with it. It meant, not that feeling +was suspended in him, but that it was compressed. It was his natural response +to any opposition which his reasonings could not shake nor his will overcome, +and which, rightly or not, conveyed to him the sense of being misunderstood. +It reacted in pain for others, but it lay with an aching weight +on his own heart, and was thrown off in an upheaval of the pent-up +kindliness and affection, the moment their true springs were touched. +The hardening power in his composition, though fugitive and comparatively +seldom displayed, was in fact proportioned to his tenderness; +and no one who had not seen him in the revulsion from a hard mood, +or the regret for it, knew what that tenderness could be. + +Underlying all the peculiarities of his nature, its strength and its weakness, +its exuberance and its reserves, was the nervous excitability +of which I have spoken in an earlier chapter. I have heard him say: +`I am nervous to such a degree that I might fancy I could not enter +a drawing-room, if I did not know from long experience that I can do it.' +He did not desire to conceal this fact, nor need others conceal it for him; +since it was only calculated to disarm criticism and to strengthen sympathy. +The special vital power which he derived from this organization +need not be reaffirmed. It carried also its inevitable disablements. +Its resources were not always under his own control; +and he frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind +which would seize him on any conventional emergency not included +in the daily social routine. In a real one he was never at fault. +He never failed in a sympathetic response or a playful retort; +he was always provided with the exact counter requisite in a game of words. +In this respect indeed he had all the powers of the conversationalist; +and the perfect ease and grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, +arose probably far more from his innate human and social qualities +than from even his familiar intercourse with the world. But he could not +extemporize a speech. He could not on the spur of the moment string together +the more or less set phrases which an after-dinner oration demands. +All his friends knew this, and spared him the necessity of refusing. +He had once a headache all day, because at a dinner, the night before, +a false report had reached him that he was going to be asked to speak. +This alone would have sufficed to prevent him from accepting any public post. +He confesses the disability in a pretty note to Professor Knight, +written in reference to a recent meeting of the Wordsworth Society. + +== + 19, Warwick Crescent, W.: May 9, '84. + +My dear Professor Knight, -- I seem ungracious and ungrateful, +but am neither; though, now that your festival is over, +I wish I could have overcome my scruples and apprehensions. +It is hard to say -- when kind people press one to `just speak for a minute' +-- that the business, so easy to almost anybody, is too bewildering +for oneself. + Ever truly yours, + Robert Browning. +== + +A Rectorial Address need probably not have been extemporized, +but it would also have been irksome to him to prepare. +He was not accustomed to uttering himself in prose except within the limits, +and under the incitements, of private correspondence. +The ceremonial publicity attaching to all official proceedings +would also have inevitably been a trial to him. He did +at one of the Wordsworth Society meetings speak a sentence from the chair, +in the absence of the appointed chairman, who had not yet arrived; +and when he had received his degree from the University of Edinburgh +he was persuaded to say a few words to the assembled students, +in which I believe he thanked them for their warm welcome; +but such exceptions only proved the rule. + +We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes +flowed from him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, +due to a nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; +and that the effusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike +old friends and new, arose also from a momentary want of self-possession. +We may admit this the more readily that in both cases it was allied +to real kindness of intention, above all in the latter, +where the fear of seeming cold towards even a friend's friend, +strove increasingly with the defective memory for names and faces +which were not quite familiar to him. He was also profoundly averse +to the idea of posing as a man of superior gifts; having indeed, +in regard to social intercourse, as little of the fastidiousness of genius +as of its bohemianism. He, therefore, made it a rule, +from the moment he took his place as a celebrity in the London world, +to exert himself for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a dinner-table, +whether their own mental resources were great or small; +and this gave rise to a frequent effort at conversation, +which converted itself into a habit, and ended by carrying him away. +This at least was his own conviction in the matter. The loud voice, +which so many persons must have learned to think habitual with him, +bore also traces of this half-unconscious nervous stimulation.* +It was natural to him in anger or excitement, but did not express +his gentler or more equable states of feeling; and when he read to others +on a subject which moved him, his utterance often subsided +into a tremulous softness which left it scarcely audible. + +-- +* Miss Browning reminds me that loud speaking had become natural to him + through the deafness of several of his intimate friends: + Landor, Kirkup, Barry Cornwall, and previously his uncle Reuben, + whose hearing had been impaired in early life by a blow from a cricket ball. + This fact necessarily modifies my impression of the case, + but does not quite destroy it. +-- + +The mental conditions under which his powers of sympathy were exercised +imposed no limits on his spontaneous human kindness. +This characteristic benevolence, or power of love, is not fully represented +in Mr. Browning's works; it is certainly not prominent in those +of the later period, during which it found the widest scope in his life; +but he has in some sense given its measure in what was intended +as an illustration of the opposite quality. He tells us, +in `Fifine at the Fair', that while the best strength of women is to be found +in their love, the best product of a man is only yielded to hate. +It is the `indignant wine' which has been wrung from the grape plant +by its external mutilation. He could depict it dramatically +in more malignant forms of emotion; but he could only think of it personally +as the reaction of a nobler feeling which has been gratuitously +outraged or repressed. + +He more directly, and still more truly, described himself +when he said at about the same time, `I have never at any period of my life +been deaf to an appeal made to me in the name of love.' +He was referring to an experience of many years before, +in which he had even yielded his better judgment to such an appeal; +and it was love in the larger sense for which the concession had been claimed. + +It was impossible that so genuine a poet, and so real a man, +should be otherwise than sensitive to the varied forms of feminine attraction. +He avowedly preferred the society of women to that of men; +they were, as I have already said, his habitual confidants, and, evidently, +his most frequent correspondents; and though he could have dispensed +with woman friends as he dispensed with many other things -- though he +most often won them without knowing it -- his frank interest in their sex, +and the often caressing kindness of manner in which it was revealed, +might justly be interpreted by individual women into a conscious appeal +to their sympathy. It was therefore doubly remarkable +that on the ground of benevolence, he scarcely discriminated between +the claim on him of a woman, and that of a man; and his attitude towards women +was in this respect so distinctive as to merit some words of notice. +It was large, generous, and unconventional; but, for that very reason, +it was not, in the received sense of the word, chivalrous. +Chivalry proceeds on the assumption that women not only cannot, +but should not, take care of themselves in any active struggle with life; +Mr. Browning had no theoretical objection to a woman's taking care of herself. +He saw no reason why, if she was hit, she should not hit back again, +or even why, if she hit, she should not receive an answering blow. +He responded swiftly to every feminine appeal to his kindness +or his protection, whether arising from physical weakness +or any other obvious cause of helplessness or suffering; but the appeal +in such cases lay first to his humanity, and only in second order to +his consideration of sex. He would have had a man flogged who beat his wife; +he would have had one flogged who ill-used a child -- or an animal: +he was notedly opposed to any sweeping principle or practice of vivisection. +But he never quite understood that the strongest women are weak, +or at all events vulnerable, in the very fact of their sex, +through the minor traditions and conventions with which society justly, +indeed necessarily, surrounds them. Still less did he understand +those real, if impalpable, differences between men and women which correspond +to the difference of position. He admitted the broad distinctions which +have become proverbial, and are therefore only a rough measure of the truth. +He could say on occasion: `You ought to BE better; you are a woman; +I ought to KNOW better; I am a man.' But he had had +too large an experience of human nature to attach permanent weight +to such generalizations; and they found certainly no expression in his works. +Scarcely an instance of a conventional, or so-called man's woman, +occurs in their whole range. Excepting perhaps the speaker +in `A Woman's Last Word', `Pompilia' and `Mildred' are +the nearest approach to it; and in both of these we find +qualities of imagination or thought which place them outside +the conventional type. He instinctively judged women, +both morally and intellectually, by the same standards as men; +and when confronted by some divergence of thought or feeling, which meant, +in the woman's case, neither quality nor defect in any strict sense +of the word, but simply a nature trained to different points of view, +an element of perplexity entered into his probable opposition. +When the difference presented itself in a neutral aspect, +it affected him like the casual peculiarities of a family or a group, +or a casual disagreement between things of the same kind. +He would say to a woman friend: `You women are so different from men!' +in the tone in which he might have said, `You Irish, or you Scotch, +are so different from Englishmen;' or again, `It is impossible for a man +to judge how a woman would act in such or such a case; you are so different;' +the case being sometimes one in which it would be inconceivable +to a normal woman, and therefore to the generality of men, +that she should act in any but one way. + +The vague sense of mystery with which the poet's mind usually invests +a being of the opposite sex, had thus often in him its counterpart +in a puzzled dramatic curiosity which constituted an equal ground of interest. + +This virtual admission of equality between the sexes, +combined with his Liberal principles to dispose him favourably +towards the movement for Female Emancipation. He approved of everything +that had been done for the higher instruction of women, and would, +not very long ago, have supported their admission to the Franchise. +But he was so much displeased by the more recent action +of some of the lady advocates of Women's Rights, that, +during the last year of his life, after various modifications of opinion, +he frankly pledged himself to the opposite view. He had even +visions of writing a tragedy or drama in support of it. +The plot was roughly sketched, and some dialogue composed, +though I believe no trace of this remains. + +It is almost implied by all I have said, that he possessed in every mood +the charm of perfect simplicity of manner. On this point he resembled +his father. His tastes lay also in the direction of great simplicity of life, +though circumstances did not allow of his indulging them to the same extent. +It may interest those who never saw him to know that he always dressed +as well as the occasion required, and always with great indifference +to the subject. In Florence he wore loose clothes which were adapted +to the climate; in London his coats were cut by a good tailor +in whatever was the prevailing fashion; the change was simply with him +an incident of the situation. He had also a look of dainty cleanliness +which was heightened by the smooth healthy texture of the skin, +and in later life by the silvery whiteness of his hair. + +His best photographic likenesses were those taken by Mr. Fradelle in 1881, +Mr. Cameron and Mr. William Grove in 1888 and 1889. + + + + +Chapter 21 + +1887-1889 + + Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning -- Removal to De Vere Gardens -- + Symptoms of failing Strength -- New Poems; New Edition of his Works -- + Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady Martin -- + Primiero and Venice -- Letters to Miss Keep -- The last Year in London -- + Asolo -- Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. + + + +The last years of Mr. Browning's life were introduced +by two auspicious events, in themselves of very unequal importance, +but each in its own way significant for his happiness and his health. +One was his son's marriage on October 4, 1887, to Miss Fannie Coddington, +of New York, a lady towards whom Mr. Barrett Browning had been strongly +attracted when he was a very young man and she little more than a child; +the other, his own removal from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens, +which took place in the previous June. The change of residence +had long been with him only a question of opportunity. +He was once even in treaty for a piece of ground at Kensington, +and intended building a house. That in which he had lived for so many years +had faults of construction and situation which the lapse of time +rendered only more conspicuous; the Regent's Canal Bill +had also doomed it to demolition; and when an opening presented itself +for securing one in all essentials more suitable, he was glad to seize it, +though at the eleventh hour. He had mentally fixed on the new locality +in those earlier days in which he still thought his son +might eventually settle in London; and it possessed at the same time +many advantages for himself. It was warmer and more sheltered +than any which he could have found on the north side of the Park; and, +in that close vicinity to Kensington Gardens, walking might be contemplated +as a pleasure, instead of mere compulsory motion from place to place. +It was only too soon apparent that the time had passed +when he could reap much benefit from the event; but he became aware +from the first moment of his installation in the new home +that the conditions of physical life had become more favourable for him. +He found an almost pathetic pleasure in completing the internal arrangements +of the well-built, commodious house. It seems, on looking back, +as if the veil had dropped before his eyes which sometimes +shrouds the keenest vision in face of an impending change; +and he had imagined, in spite of casual utterances which disclaimed the hope, +that a new lease of life was being given to him. He had for several years +been preparing for the more roomy dwelling which he would probably +some day inhabit; and handsome pieces of old furniture had been stowed away +in the house in Warwick Crescent, pending the occasion for their use. +He loved antiquities of this kind, in a manner which sometimes recalled +his father's affection for old books; and most of these +had been bought in Venice, where frequent visits to the noted curiosity-shops +had been his one bond of habit with his tourist countrymen in that city. +They matched the carved oak and massive gildings and valuable tapestries +which had carried something of Casa Guidi into his first London home. +Brass lamps that had once hung inside chapels in some Catholic church, +had long occupied the place of the habitual gaselier; and to these was added +in the following year one of silver, also brought from Venice -- +the Jewish `Sabbath lamp'. Another acquisition, made only a few months, +if indeed so long, before he left London for the last time, +was that of a set of casts representing the Seasons, +which were to stand at intervals on brackets in a certain unsightly space +on his drawing-room wall; and he had said of these, which I think +his son was procuring for him: `Only my four little heads, +and then I shall not buy another thing for the house' -- +in a tone of childlike satisfaction at his completed work. + +This summer he merely went to St. Moritz, where he and his sister were, +for the greater part of their stay, again guests of Mrs. Bloomfield Moore. +He was determined to give the London winter a fuller trial +in the more promising circumstances of his new life, +and there was much to be done in De Vere Gardens after his return. +His father's six thousand books, together with those +he had himself accumulated, were for the first time to be spread out +in their proper array, instead of crowding together in rows, +behind and behind each other. The new bookcases, which could stand +in the large new study, were waiting to receive them. He did not know +until he tried to fulfil it how greatly the task would tax his strength. +The library was, I believe, never completely arranged. + +During this winter of 1887-8 his friends first perceived that a change +had come over him. They did not realize that his life was drawing to a close; +it was difficult to do so when so much of the former elasticity remained; +when he still proclaimed himself `quite well' so long as he was not +definitely suffering. But he was often suffering; one terrible cold +followed another. There was general evidence that he had at last grown old. +He, however, made no distinct change in his mode of life. +Old habits, suspended by his longer imprisonments to the house, +were resumed as soon as he was set free. He still dined out; +still attended the private view of every, or almost every art exhibition. +He kept up his unceasing correspondence -- in one or two cases +voluntarily added to it; though he would complain day after day +that his fingers ached from the number of hours through which +he had held his pen. One of the interesting letters of this period +was written to Mr. George Bainton, of Coventry, to be used, +as that gentleman tells me, in the preparation of a lecture +on the `Art of Effective Written Composition'. It confirms the statement +I have had occasion to make, that no extraneous influence +ever permanently impressed itself on Mr. Browning's style. + +== + 29, De Vere Gardens: Oct. 6, '87. + +Dear Sir, -- I was absent from London when your kind letter +reached this house, to which I removed some time ago -- +hence the delay in acknowledging your kindness and replying, in some degree, +to your request. All I can say, however, is this much -- and very little -- +that, by the indulgence of my father and mother, I was allowed +to live my own life and choose my own course in it; which, having been +the same from the beginning to the end, necessitated a permission to read +nearly all sorts of books, in a well-stocked and very miscellaneous library. +I had no other direction than my parents' taste for whatever +was highest and best in literature; but I found out for myself +many forgotten fields which proved the richest of pastures: +and, so far as a preference of a particular `style' is concerned, +I believe mine was just the same at first as at last. +I cannot name any one author who exclusively influenced me in that respect, -- +as to the fittest expression of thought -- but thought itself had many +impulsions from very various sources, a matter not to your present purpose. +I repeat, this is very little to say, but all in my power -- +and it is heartily at your service -- if not as of any value, +at least as a proof that I gratefully feel your kindness, +and am, dear Sir Yours very truly, + Robert Browning. +== + +In December 1887 he wrote `Rosny', the first poem in `Asolando', +and that which perhaps most displays his old subtle dramatic power; +it was followed by `Beatrice Signorini' and `Flute-Music'. +Of the `Bad Dreams' two or three were also written in London, +I think, during that winter. The `Ponte dell' Angelo' was imagined +during the next autumn in Venice. `White Witchcraft' had been suggested +in the same summer by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands +which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there. In the spring of 1888 +he began revising his works for the last, and now entirely uniform edition, +which was issued in monthly volumes, and completed by the July of 1889. +Important verbal corrections were made in `The Inn Album', +though not, I think, in many of the later poems; but that in which +he found most room for improvement was, very naturally, `Pauline'; +and he wrote concerning it to Mr. Smith the following interesting letter. + +== + 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Feb. 27, '88. + +My dear Smith, -- When I received the Proofs of the 1st. vol. +on Friday evening, I made sure of returning them next day -- +so accurately are they printed. But on looking at that unlucky `Pauline', +which I have not touched for half a century, a sudden impulse came over me +to take the opportunity of just correcting the most obvious faults +of expression, versification and construction, -- letting the THOUGHTS +-- such as they are -- remain exactly as at first: I have only treated +the imperfect expression of these just as I have now and then done +for an amateur friend, if he asked me and I liked him enough to do so. +Not a line is displaced, none added, none taken away. +I have just sent it to the printer's with an explanatory word: and told him +that he will have less trouble with all the rest of the volumes put together +than with this little portion. I expect to return all the rest +to-morrow or next day. + +As for the sketch -- the portrait -- it admits of no very superior treatment: +but, as it is the only one which makes me out youngish, -- +I should like to know if an artist could not strengthen the thing +by a pencil touch or two in a few minutes -- improve the eyes, eyebrows, +and mouth somewhat. The head too wants improvement: were Pen here +he could manage it all in a moment. + Ever truly yours, + Robert Browning. +== + +Any attempt at modifying the expressed thoughts of his twenty-first year +would have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with +the work of another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, +if it had been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words +what I have already asserted, that the power of detail correction either was, +or had become by experience, very strong in him. + +The history of this summer of 1888 is partly given in a letter to Lady Martin. + +== + 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: Aug. 12, '88. + +Dear Lady Martin, -- The date of your kind letter, -- June 18, -- +would affect me indeed, but for the good conscience I retain +despite of appearances. So uncertain have I been as to the course +we should take, -- my sister and myself -- when the time came +for leaving town, that it seemed as if `next week' might be +the eventful week when all doubts would disappear -- +perhaps the strange cold weather and interminable rain made it hard to venture +from under one's roof even in fancy of being better lodged elsewhere. +This very day week it was the old story -- cold -- then followed +the suffocating eight or nine tropical days which forbade any more delay, +and we leave to-morrow for a place called Primiero, near Feltre -- +where my son and his wife assure us we may be comfortably +-- and coolly -- housed, until we can accompany them to Venice, +which we may stay at for a short time. You remember our troubles +at Llangollen about the purchase of a Venetian house . . . ? +My son, however, nothing daunted, and acting under abler counsels than I was +fortunate enough to obtain,* has obtained a still more desirable acquisition, +in the shape of the well-known Rezzonico Palace (that of Pope Clement 13th) -- +and, I believe, is to be congratulated on his bargain. I cannot profess +the same interest in this as in the earlier object of his ambition, +but am quite satisfied by the evident satisfaction of the `young people'. +So, -- by the old law of compensation, -- while we may expect +pleasant days abroad -- our chance is gone of once again enjoying your company +in your own lovely Vale of Llangollen; -- had we not been pulled otherwise +by the inducements we could not resist, -- another term of delightful weeks -- +each tipped with a sweet starry Sunday at the little church +leading to the House Beautiful where we took our rest of an evening +spent always memorably -- this might have been our fortunate lot once again! +As it is, perhaps we need more energetic treatment than we should get with you +-- for both of us are more oppressed than ever by the exigencies +of the lengthy season, and require still more bracing air +than the gently lulling temperature of Wales. May it be doing you, +and dear Sir Theodore, all the good you deserve -- throwing in the share +due to us, who must forego it! With all love from us both, +ever affectionately yours + Robert Browning. + +-- +* Those of Mr. Alexander Malcolm. +-- +== + +He did start for Italy on the following day, but had become so ill, +that he was on the point of postponing his departure. +He suffered throughout the journey as he had never suffered +on any journey before; and during his first few days at Primiero, +could only lead the life of an invalid. He rallied, however, as usual, +under the potent effects of quiet, fresh air, and sunshine; +and fully recovered his normal state before proceeding to Venice, +where the continued sense of physical health combined with +many extraneous circumstances to convert his proposed short stay +into a long one. A letter from the mountains, addressed to a lady +who had never been abroad, and to whom he sometimes wrote +with more descriptive detail than to other friends, +gives a touching glimpse of his fresh delight in the beauties of nature, +and his tender constant sympathy with the animal creation. + +== + Primiero: Sept. 7, '88. + + . . . . . + +`The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, +ever since the clearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you +in my last. It is, I am more and more confirmed in believing, +the most beautiful place I was ever resident in: far more so +than Gressoney or even St.-Pierre de Chartreuse. You would indeed delight +in seeing the magnificence of the mountains, -- the range on either side, +which morning and evening, in turn, transmute literally to gold, -- +I mean what I say. Their utterly bare ridges of peaks and crags of all shape, +quite naked of verdure, glow like yellow ore; and, at times, +there is a silver change, as the sun prevails or not. + +`The valley is one green luxuriance on all sides; Indian corn, +with beans, gourds, and even cabbages, filling up the interstices; +and the flowers, though not presenting any novelty to my uninstructed eyes, +yet surely more large and purely developed than I remember +to have seen elsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here +must be above ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, +what strikes me as peculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top +as perfect as if no insect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck. . . . + +`. . . Did I tell you we had a little captive fox, -- the most engaging +of little vixens? To my great joy she has broken her chain and escaped, +never to be recaptured, I trust. The original wild and untameable nature +was to be plainly discerned even in this early stage of the whelp's life: +she dug herself, with such baby feet, a huge hole, the use of which +was evident, when, one day, she pounced thence on a stray turkey -- +allured within reach by the fragments of fox's breakfast, -- the intruder +escaping with the loss of his tail. The creature came back one night +to explore the old place of captivity, -- ate some food and retired. +For myself, -- I continue absolutely well: I do not walk much, +but for more than amends, am in the open air all day long.' +== + +No less striking is a short extract from a letter written in Venice +to the same friend, Miss Keep. + +== + Ca' Alvise: Oct. 16, '88. + +`Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my mind, +than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom window +commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagulls flying, +the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, +behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently all the rims +are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb sends before it +a long column of its own essence apparently: so my day begins.' +== + +We feel, as we read these late, and even later words, +that the lyric imagination was renewing itself in the incipient dissolution +of other powers. It is the Browning of `Pippa Passes' who speaks in them. + +He suffered less on the whole during the winter of 1888-9. +It was already advanced when he returned to England; +and the attacks of cold and asthma were either shorter or less frequent. +He still maintained throughout the season his old social routine, +not omitting his yearly visit, on the anniversary of Waterloo, +to Lord Albemarle, its last surviving veteran. He went for some days +to Oxford during the commemoration week, and had for the first, +as also last time, the pleasure of Dr. Jowett's almost exclusive society +at his beloved Balliol College. He proceeded with his new volume of poems. +A short letter written to Professor Knight, June 16, and of which +the occasion speaks for itself, fitly closes the labours of his life; +for it states his view of the position and function of poetry, +in one brief phrase, which might form the text to an exhaustive treatise +upon them. + +== + 29, De Vere Gardens, W.: June 16, 1889. + +My dear Professor Knight, -- I am delighted to hear +that there is a likelihood of your establishing yourself in Glasgow, +and illustrating Literature as happily as you have expounded Philosophy +at St. Andrews. It is certainly the right order of things: +Philosophy first, and Poetry, which is its highest outcome, afterward -- +and much harm has been done by reversing the natural process. +How capable you are of doing justice to the highest philosophy +embodied in poetry, your various studies of Wordsworth prove abundantly; +and for the sake of both Literature and Philosophy I wish you success +with all my heart. + +Believe me, dear Professor Knight, yours very truly, + Robert Browning. +== + +But he experienced, when the time came, more than his habitual disinclination +for leaving home. A distinct shrinking from the fatigue of going to Italy +now added itself to it; for he had suffered when travelling back +in the previous winter, almost as much as on the outward journey, +though he attributed the distress to a different cause: his nerves were, +he thought, shaken by the wearing discomforts incidental on a broken tooth. +He was for the first time painfully sensitive to the vibration of the train. +He had told his friends, both in Venice and London, that so far +as he was able to determine, he would never return to Italy. +But it was necessary he should go somewhere, and he had no alternative plan. +For a short time in this last summer he entertained the idea +of a visit to Scotland; it had indeed definitely shaped itself in his mind; +but an incident, trivial in itself, though he did not think it so, +destroyed the first scheme, and it was then practically too late +to form another. During the second week in August the weather broke. +There could no longer be any question of the northward journey +without even a fixed end in view. His son and daughter had taken possession +of their new home, the Palazzo Rezzonico, and were anxious +to see him and Miss Browning there; their wishes naturally had weight. +The casting vote in favour of Venice was given by a letter from Mrs. Bronson, +proposing Asolo as the intermediate stage. She had fitted up for herself +a little summer retreat there, and promised that her friends should, +if they joined her, be also comfortably installed. The journey +was this time propitious. It was performed without imprudent haste, +and Mr. Browning reached Asolo unfatigued and to all appearance well. + +He saw this, his first love among Italian cities, at a season of the year +more favourable to its beauty than even that of his first visit; +yet he must himself have been surprised by the new rapture of admiration +which it created in him, and which seemed to grow with his lengthened stay. +This state of mind was the more striking, that new symptoms +of his physical decline were now becoming apparent, and were in themselves +of a depressing kind. He wrote to a friend in England, +that the atmosphere of Asolo, far from being oppressive, +produced in him all the effects of mountain air, and he was conscious of +difficulty of breathing whenever he walked up hill. He also suffered, +as the season advanced, great inconvenience from cold. +The rooms occupied by himself and his sister were both +unprovided with fireplaces; and though the daily dinner with Mrs. Bronson +obviated the discomfort of the evenings, there remained still +too many hours of the autumnal day in which the impossibility of heating +their own little apartment must have made itself unpleasantly felt. +The latter drawback would have been averted by the fulfilment +of Mr. Browning's first plan, to be in Venice by the beginning of October, +and return to the comforts of his own home before the winter +had quite set in; but one slight motive for delay succeeded another, +till at last a more serious project introduced sufficient ground of detention. +He seemed possessed by a strange buoyancy -- an almost feverish joy in life, +which blunted all sensations of physical distress, or helped him +to misinterpret them. When warned against the imprudence of remaining +where he knew he suffered from cold, and believed, rightly or wrongly, +that his asthmatic tendencies were increased, he would reply +that he was growing acclimatized -- that he was quite well. +And, in a fitful or superficial sense, he must have been so. + +His letters of that period are one continuous picture, +glowing with his impressions of the things which they describe. +The same words will repeat themselves as the same subject +presents itself to his pen; but the impulse to iteration +scarcely ever affects us as mechanical. It seems always a fresh response +to some new stimulus to thought or feeling, which he has received. +These reach him from every side. It is not only the Asolo +of this peaceful later time which has opened before him, but the Asolo +of `Pippa Passes' and `Sordello'; that which first stamped itself +on his imagination in the echoes of the Court life of Queen Catharine,* +and of the barbaric wars of the Eccelini. Some of his letters +dwell especially on these early historical associations: on the strange sense +of reopening the ancient chronicle which he had so deeply studied +fifty years before. The very phraseology of the old Italian text, +which I am certain he had never glanced at from that distant time, +is audible in an account of the massacre of San Zenone, +the scene of which he has been visiting. To the same correspondent +he says that his two hours' drive to Asolo `seemed to be a dream;' +and again, after describing, or, as he thinks, only trying to describe +some beautiful feature of the place, `but it is indescribable!' + +-- +* Catharine Cornaro, the dethroned queen of Cyprus. +-- + +A letter addressed to Mrs. FitzGerald, October 8, 1889, +is in part a fitting sequel to that which he had written to her +from the same spot, eleven years before. + +== +`. . . Fortunately there is little changed here: my old Albergo, -- +ruinous with earthquake -- is down and done with -- but few novelties +are observable -- except the regrettable one that the silk industry +has been transported elsewhere -- to Cornuda and other places +nearer the main railway. No more Pippas -- at least of the silk-winding sort! + +`But the pretty type is far from extinct. + +`Autumn is beginning to paint the foliage, but thin it as well; +and the sea of fertility all round our height, which a month ago +showed pomegranates and figs and chestnuts, -- walnuts and apples +all rioting together in full glory, -- all this is daily disappearing. +I say nothing of the olive and the vine. I find the Turret +rather the worse for careful weeding -- the hawks which used to build there +have been "shot for food" -- and the echo is sadly curtailed of its replies; +still, things are the same in the main. Shall I ever see them again, +when -- as I suppose -- we leave for Venice in a fortnight? . . .' +== + +In the midst of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks +the old keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges +for what living things were to be found there. He would whistle softly +to the lizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, +to try his old power of attracting them. + +On the 15th of October he wrote to Mrs. Skirrow, after some +preliminary description: + +== +Then -- such a view over the whole Lombard plain; not a site in view, +or APPROXIMATE view at least, without its story. Autumn is now painting +all the abundance of verdure, -- figs, pomegranates, chestnuts, and vines, +and I don't know what else, -- all in a wonderful confusion, -- +and now glowing with all the colours of the rainbow. Some weeks back, +the little town was glorified by the visit of a decent theatrical troop +who played in a theatre INside the old palace of Queen Catharine Cornaro -- +utilized also as a prison in which I am informed are at present full five +if not six malefactors guilty of stealing grapes, and the like enormities. +Well, the troop played for a fortnight together exceedingly well -- +high tragedy and low comedy -- and the stage-box which I occupied +cost 16 francs. The theatre had been out of use for six years, +for we are out of the way and only a baiting-place for a company +pushing on to Venice. In fine, we shall stay here probably +for a week or more, -- and then proceed to Pen, at the Rezzonico; +a month there, and then homewards! . . . + +I delight in finding that the beloved Husband and precious friend +manages to do without the old yoke about his neck, and enjoys himself +as never anybody had a better right to do. I continue to congratulate him +on his emancipation and ourselves on a more frequent enjoyment of his company +in consequence.* Give him my true love; take mine, dearest friend, -- +and my sister's love to you both goes with it. + Ever affectionately yours + Robert Browning. + +-- +* Mr. Skirrow had just resigned his post of Master in Chancery. +-- +== + +The cry of `homewards!' now frequently recurs in his letters. +We find it in one written a week later to Mr. G. M. Smith, +otherwise very expressive of his latest condition of mind and feeling. + +== + Asolo, Veneto, Italia: Oct. 22, '89. + +My dear Smith, -- I was indeed delighted to get your letter two days ago -- +for there ARE such accidents as the loss of a parcel, +even when it has been despatched from so important a place as this city -- +for a regular city it is, you must know, with all the rights of one, -- +older far than Rome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name +to the adjoining hills. `Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the walls +still surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, +and you even overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900 souls +-- in the city Proper, that is -- for the territory below and around +contains some 10,000. But we are at the very top of things, +garlanded about, as it were, with a narrow line of houses, -- +some palatial, such as you would be glad to see in London, -- +and above all towers the old dwelling of Queen Cornaro, who was forced +to exchange her Kingdom of Cyprus for this pretty but petty dominion +where she kept state in a mimic Court, with Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, +for her secretary -- who has commemorated the fact in his `Asolani' +or dialogues inspired by the place: and I do assure you that, +after some experience of beautiful sights in Italy and elsewhere +I know nothing comparable to the view from the Queen's tower and palace, +still perfect in every respect. Whenever you pay Pen and his wife +the visit you are pledged to, * it will go hard but you spend five hours +in a journey to Asolo. The one thing I am disappointed in is to find +that the silk-cultivation with all the pretty girls who were engaged in it +are transported to Cornuda and other places, -- nearer the railway, I suppose: +and to this may be attributed the decrease in the number of inhabitants. +The weather when I wrote last WAS `blue and blazing -- (at noon-day) --' +but we share in the general plague of rain, -- had a famous storm yesterday: +while to-day is blue and sunny as ever. Lastly, for your admonition: +we HAVE a perfect telegraphic communication; and at the passage above, +where I put a * I was interrupted by the arrival of a telegram: +thank you all the same for your desire to relieve my anxiety. +And now, to our immediate business -- which is only to keep thanking you +for your constant goodness, present and future: do with the book +just as you will. I fancy it is bigger in bulk than usual. +As for the `proofs' -- I go at the end of the month to Venice, +whither you will please to send whatever is necessary. . . . +I shall do well to say as little as possible of my good wishes +for you and your family, for it comes to much the same thing +as wishing myself prosperity: no matter, my sister's kindest regards +shall excuse mine, and I will only add that I am, as ever, + Affectionately yours + Robert Browning. +== + +A general quickening of affectionate impulse seemed part of this last leap +in the socket of the dying flame. + + + + +Chapter 22 + +1889 + + Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo -- Venice -- + Letter to Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett -- Lines in the `Athenaeum' -- + Letter to Miss Keep -- Illness -- Death -- Funeral Ceremonial at Venice -- + Publication of `Asolando' -- Interment in Poets' Corner. + + + +He had said in writing to Mrs. FitzGerald, `Shall I ever see them' +(the things he is describing) `again?' If not then, soon afterwards, +he conceived a plan which was to insure his doing so. +On a piece of ground belonging to the old castle, stood the shell of a house. +The two constituted one property which the Municipality of Asolo +had hitherto refused to sell. It had been a dream of Mr. Browning's life +to possess a dwelling, however small, in some beautiful spot, +which should place him beyond the necessity of constantly seeking +a new summer resort, and above the alternative of living at an inn, +or accepting -- as he sometimes feared, abusing -- the hospitality +of his friends. He was suddenly fascinated by the idea +of buying this piece of ground; and, with the efficient help +which his son could render during his absence, completing the house, +which should be christened `Pippa's Tower'. It was evident, +he said in one of his letters, that for his few remaining years +his summer wanderings must always end in Venice. What could he do better +than secure for himself this resting-place by the way? + +His offer of purchase was made through Mrs. Bronson, +to Count Loredano and other important members of the municipality, +and their personal assent to it secured. But the town council +was on the eve of re-election; no important business could be transacted by it +till after this event; and Mr. Browning awaited its decision +till the end of October at Asolo, and again throughout November in Venice, +without fully understanding the delay. The vote proved favourable; +but the night on which it was taken was that of his death. + +The consent thus given would have been only a first step towards +the accomplishment of his wish. It was necessary that it should be ratified +by the Prefecture of Treviso, in the district of which Asolo lies; +and Mr. Barrett Browning, who had determined to carry on the negotiations, +met with subsequent opposition in the higher council. This has now, however, +been happily overcome. + +A comprehensive interest attaches to one more letter of the Asolo time. +It was addressed to Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett. + +== + Asolo, Veneto: Oct. 22, '89. + +My dear George, -- It was a great pleasure to get your kind letter; +though after some delay. We were not in the Tyrol this year, +but have been for six weeks or more in this little place which strikes me, -- +as it did fifty years ago, which is something to say, considering that, +properly speaking, it was the first spot of Italian soil +I ever set foot upon -- having proceeded to Venice by sea -- +and thence here. It is an ancient city, older than Rome, +and the scene of Queen Catharine Cornaro's exile, where she held a mock court, +with all its attendants, on a miniature scale; Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, +being her secretary. Her palace is still above us all, +the old fortifications surround the hill-top, and certain of the houses +are stately -- though the population is not above 1,000 souls: +the province contains many more of course. But the immense charm +of the surrounding country is indescribable -- I have never seen its like -- +the Alps on one side, the Asolan mountains all round, -- and opposite, +the vast Lombard plain, -- with indications of Venice, Padua, +and the other cities, visible to a good eye on a clear day; +while everywhere are sites of battles and sieges of bygone days, +described in full by the historians of the Middle Ages. + +We have a valued friend here, Mrs. Bronson, who for years has been +our hostess at Venice, and now is in possession of a house here +(built into the old city wall) -- she was induced to choose it +through what I have said about the beauties of the place: +and through her care and kindness we are comfortably lodged close by. +We think of leaving in a week or so for Venice -- guests of Pen and his wife; +and after a short stay with them we shall return to London. +Pen came to see us for a couple of days: I was hardly prepared +for his surprise and admiration which quite equalled my own +and that of my sister. All is happily well with them -- +their palazzo excites the wonder of everybody, so great is Pen's cleverness, +and extemporised architectural knowledge, as apparent in all +he has done there; why, WHY will you not go and see him there? +He and his wife are very hospitable and receive many visitors. +Have I told you that there was a desecrated chapel which he has restored +in honour of his mother -- putting up there the inscription by Tommaseo +now above Casa Guidi? + +Fannie is all you say, -- and most dear and precious to us all. . . . +Pen's medal to which you refer, is awarded to him in spite of +his written renunciation of any sort of wish to contend for a prize. +He will now resume painting and sculpture -- having been necessarily occupied +with the superintendence of his workmen -- a matter capitally managed, +I am told. For the rest, both Sarianna and myself are very well; +I have just sent off my new volume of verses for publication. +The complete edition of the works of E. B. B. begins in a few days. +== + +The second part of this letter is very forcibly written, +and, in a certain sense, more important than the first; +but I suppress it by the desire of Mr. Browning's sister and son, +and in complete concurrence with their judgment in the matter. +It was a systematic defence of the anger aroused in him +by a lately published reference to his wife's death; and though +its reasonings were unanswerable as applied to the causes of his emotion, +they did not touch the manner in which it had been displayed. +The incident was one which deserved only to be forgotten; +and if an injudicious act had not preserved its memory, +no word of mine should recall it. Since, however, +it has been thought fit to include the `Lines to Edward Fitzgerald' +in a widely circulated Bibliography of Mr. Browning's Works,* +I owe it to him to say -- what I believe is only known +to his sister and myself -- that there was a moment in which +he regretted those lines, and would willingly have withdrawn them. +This was the period, unfortunately short, which intervened +between his sending them to the `Athenaeum', and their appearance there. +When once public opinion had expressed itself upon them +in its too extreme forms of sympathy and condemnation, +the pugnacity of his mind found support in both, and regret was silenced +if not destroyed. In so far as his published words remained open to censure, +I may also, without indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. +That which to the merely sympathetic observer appeared +a subject for disapprobation, perhaps disgust, had affected him +with the directness of a sharp physical blow. He spoke of it, +and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. +The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, +though never forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words +which so unexpectedly met his eye, in a vividness of remembrance +which was reality. `I felt as if she had died yesterday,' +he said some days later to a friend, in half deprecation, half denial, +of the too great fierceness of his reaction. He only recovered his balance +in striking the counter-blow. That he could be thus affected +at an age usually destructive of the more violent emotions, +is part of the mystery of those closing days which had already overtaken him. + +-- +* That contained in Mr. Sharp's `Life'. A still more recent publication + gives the lines in full. +-- + +By the first of November he was in Venice with his son and daughter; +and during the three following weeks was apparently well, +though a physician whom he met at a dinner party, and to whom +he had half jokingly given his pulse to feel, had learned from it +that his days were numbered. He wrote to Miss Keep on the 9th of the month: + +== +`. . . Mrs. Bronson has bought a house at Asolo, and beautified it indeed, -- +niched as it is in an old tower of the fortifications +still partly surrounding the city (for a city it is), +and eighteen towers, more or less ruinous, are still discoverable there: +it is indeed a delightful place. Meantime, to go on, -- we came here, +and had a pleasant welcome from our hosts -- who are truly magnificently +lodged in this vast palazzo which my son has really shown himself +fit to possess, so surprising are his restorations and improvements: +the whole is all but complete, decorated, -- that is, renewed admirably +in all respects. + +`What strikes me as most noteworthy is the cheerfulness and comfort +of the huge rooms. + +`The building is warmed throughout by a furnace and pipes. + +`Yesterday, on the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: +bright sunshine, blue sky, -- snow-tipped Alps in the distance. +No place, I think, ever suited my needs, bodily and intellectual, so well. + +`The first are satisfied -- I am QUITE well, every breathing +inconvenience gone: and as for the latter, I got through +whatever had given me trouble in London. . . .' +== + +But it was winter, even in Venice, and one day began with an actual fog. +He insisted, notwithstanding, on taking his usual walk on the Lido. +He caught a bronchial cold of which the symptoms were aggravated +not only by the asthmatic tendency, but by what proved to be +exhaustion of the heart; and believing as usual that his liver alone +was at fault, he took little food, and refused wine altogether.* + +-- +* He always declined food when he was unwell; and maintained + that in this respect the instinct of animals was far more just + than the idea often prevailing among human beings that a failing appetite + should be assisted or coerced. +-- + +He did not yield to the sense of illness; he did not keep his bed. +Some feverish energy must have supported him through +this avoidance of every measure which might have afforded +even temporary strength or relief. On Friday, the 29th, +he wrote to a friend in London that he had waited thus long +for the final answer from Asolo, but would wait no longer. +He would start for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday +of the following week. It was true `he had caught a cold; +he felt sadly asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel; but he hoped for the best, +and would write again soon.' He wrote again the following day, +declaring himself better. He had been punished, he said, +for long-standing neglect of his `provoking liver'; but a simple medicine, +which he had often taken before, had this time also relieved +the oppression of his chest; his friend was not to be uneasy about him; +`it was in his nature to get into scrapes of this kind, +but he always managed, somehow or other, to extricate himself from them.' +He concluded with fresh details of his hopes and plans. + +In the ensuing night the bronchial distress increased; +and in the morning he consented to see his son's physician, Dr. Cini, +whose investigation of the case at once revealed to him its seriousness. +The patient had been removed two days before, from the second storey +of the house, which the family then inhabited, to an entresol apartment +just above the ground-floor, from which he could pass into the dining-room +without fatigue. Its lower ceilings gave him (erroneously) an impression +of greater warmth, and he had imagined himself benefited by the change. +A freer circulation of air was now considered imperative, +and he was carried to Mrs. Browning's spacious bedroom, +where an open fireplace supplied both warmth and ventilation, +and large windows admitted all the sunshine of the Grand Canal. +Everything was done for him which professional skill and loving care could do. +Mrs. Browning, assisted by her husband, and by a young lady +who was then her guest,* filled the place of the trained nurses +until these could arrive; for a few days the impending calamity +seemed even to have been averted. The bronchial attack was overcome. +Mr. Browning had once walked from the bed to the sofa; his sister, +whose anxiety had perhaps been spared the full knowledge of his state, +could send comforting reports to his friends at home. But the enfeebled heart +had made its last effort. Attacks of faintness set in. +Special signs of physical strength maintained themselves +until within a few hours of the end. On Wednesday, December 11, +a consultation took place between Dr. Cini, Dr. da Vigna, and Dr. Minich; +and the opinion was then expressed for the first time that recovery, +though still possible, was not within the bounds of probability. Weakness, +however, rapidly gained upon him towards the close of the following day. +Two hours before midnight of this Thursday, December 12, he breathed his last. + +-- +* Miss Evelyn Barclay, now Mrs. Douglas Giles. +-- + +He had been a good patient. He took food and medicine whenever they were +offered to him. Doctors and nurses became alike warmly interested in him. +His favourite among the latter was, I think, the Venetian, a widow, +Margherita Fiori, a simple kindly creature who had known much sorrow. +To her he said, about five hours before the end, `I feel much worse. +I know now that I must die.' He had shown at intervals a perception, +even conviction, of his danger; but the excitement of the brain, +caused by exhaustion on the one hand and the necessary stimulants +on the other, must have precluded all systematic consciousness +of approaching death. He repeatedly assured his family +that he was not suffering. + +A painful and urgent question now presented itself for solution: +Where should his body find its last rest? He had said to his sister +in the foregoing summer, that he wished to be buried wherever he might die: +if in England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy, +with his wife. Circumstances all pointed to his removal to Florence; +but a recent decree had prohibited further interment +in the English Cemetery there, and the town had no power to rescind it. +When this was known in Venice, that city begged for itself the privilege +of retaining the illustrious guest, and rendering him the last honours. +For the moment the idea even recommended itself to Mr. Browning's son. +But he felt bound to make a last effort in the direction of the burial +at Florence; and was about to despatch a telegram, in which he invoked +the mediation of Lord Dufferin, when all difficulties were laid at rest +by a message from the Dean of Westminster, conveying his assent +to an interment in the Abbey.* He had already telegraphed for information +concerning the date of the funeral, with a view to the memorial service, +which he intended to hold on the same day. Nor would the further honour +have remained for even twenty-four hours ungranted, because unasked, +but for the belief prevailing among Mr. Browning's friends +that there was no room for its acceptance. + +-- +* The assent thus conveyed had assumed the form of an offer, + and was characterized as such by the Dean himself. +-- + +It was still necessary to provide for the more immediate removal of the body. +Local custom forbade its retention after the lapse of two days and nights; +and only in view of the special circumstances of the case +could a short respite be granted to the family. Arrangements were +therefore at once made for a private service, to be conducted +by the British Chaplain in one of the great halls of the Rezzonico Palace; +and by two o'clock of the following day, Sunday, a large number +of visitors and residents had assembled there. The subsequent passage +to the mortuary island of San Michele had been organized by the city, +and was to display so much of the character of a public pageant +as the hurried preparation allowed. The chief municipal officers +attended the service. When this had been performed, the coffin was carried +by eight firemen (pompieri), arrayed in their distinctive uniform, +to the massive, highly decorated municipal barge (Barca delle Pompe funebri) +which waited to receive it. It was guarded during the transit +by four `uscieri' in `gala' dress, two sergeants of the Municipal Guard, +and two of the firemen bearing torches: the remainder of these +following in a smaller boat. The barge was towed by a steam launch +of the Royal Italian Marine. The chief officers of the city, +the family and friends in their separate gondolas, completed the procession. +On arriving at San Michele, the firemen again received their burden, +and bore it to the chapel in which its place had been reserved. + + +When `Pauline' first appeared, the Author had received, he never learned +from whom, a sprig of laurel enclosed with this quotation from the poem, + + Trust in signs and omens. + +Very beautiful garlands were now piled about his bier, +offerings of friendship and affection. Conspicuous among these +was the ceremonial structure of metallic foliage and porcelain flowers, +inscribed `Venezia a Roberto Browning', which represented +the Municipality of Venice. On the coffin lay one comprehensive symbol +of the fulfilled prophecy: a wreath of laurel-leaves +which his son had placed there. + + +A final honour was decreed to the great English Poet by the city in which +he had died; the affixing of a memorial tablet to the outer wall +of the Rezzonico Palace. Since these pages were first written, +the tablet has been placed. It bears the following inscription: + + A + ROBERTO BROWNING + + MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO + IL 12 DICEMBRE 1889 + VENEZIA + POSE + +Below this, in the right-hand corner appear two lines selected from his works: + + Open my heart and you will see + Graved inside of it, `Italy'. + +Nor were these the only expressions of Italian respect and sympathy. +The municipality of Florence sent its message of condolence. +Asolo, poor in all but memories, itself bore the expenses of a mural tablet +for the house which Mr. Browning had occupied. It is now known +that Signor Crispi would have appealed to Parliament to rescind the exclusion +from the Florentine cemetery, if the motive for doing so +had been less promptly removed. + +Mr. Browning's own country had indeed opened a way for the reunion +of the husband and wife. The idea had rapidly shaped itself +in the public mind that, since they might not rest side by side in Italy, +they should be placed together among the great of their own land; +and it was understood that the Dean would sanction Mrs. Browning's +interment in the Abbey, if a formal application to this end were made to him. +But Mr. Barrett Browning could not reconcile himself to the thought +of disturbing his mother's grave, so long consecrated to Florence +by her warm love and by its grateful remembrance; and at the desire +of both surviving members of the family the suggestion was set aside. + +Two days after his temporary funeral, privately and at night, +all that remained of Robert Browning was conveyed to the railway station; +and thence, by a trusted servant, to England. The family followed +within twenty-four hours, having made the necessary preparations +for a long absence from Venice; and, travelling with the utmost speed, +arrived in London on the same day. The house in De Vere Gardens +received its master once more. + + +`Asolando' was published on the day of Mr. Browning's death. +The report of his illness had quickened public interest +in the forthcoming work, and his son had the satisfaction of telling him +of its already realized success, while he could still receive +a warm, if momentary, pleasure from the intelligence. +The circumstances of its appearance place it beyond ordinary criticism; +they place it beyond even an impartial analysis of its contents. +It includes one or two poems to which we would gladly assign +a much earlier date; I have been told on good authority that we may do this +in regard to one of them. It is difficult to refer the `Epilogue' +to a coherent mood of any period of its author's life. +It is certain, however, that by far the greater part of the little volume +was written in 1888-89, and I believe all that is most serious in it +was the product of the later year. It possesses for many readers +the inspiration of farewell words; for all of us it has their pathos. + + +He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, +on the 31st of December, 1889. In this tardy act of national recognition +England claimed her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of +his countrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poet +to his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs. Browning's poem, +`The Sleep', set to music by Dr. Bridge, were sung for the first time +on this occasion. + + + + +Conclusion + + + +A few words must still be said upon that purport and tendency +of Robert Browning's work, which has been defined by a few persons, +and felt by very many as his `message'. + +The definition has been disputed on the ground of Art. +We are told by Mr. Sharp, though in somewhat different words, +that the poet, qua poet, cannot deliver a `message' +such as directly addresses itself to the intellectual or moral sense; +since his special appeal to us lies not through the substance, +but through the form, or presentment, of what he has had to say; +since, therefore (by implication), in claiming for it +an intellectual -- as distinct from an aesthetic -- character, +we ignore its function as poetry. + +It is difficult to argue justly, where the question at issue +turns practically on the meaning of a word. Mr. Sharp would, I think, +be the first to admit this; and it appears to me that, in the present case, +he so formulates his theory as to satisfy his artistic conscience, +and yet leave room for the recognition of that intellectual quality +so peculiar to Mr. Browning's verse. But what one member +of the aesthetic school may express with a certain reserve +is proclaimed unreservedly by many more; and Mr. Sharp must forgive me, +if for the moment I regard him as one of these; and if I oppose his arguments +in the words of another poet and critic of poetry, whose claim +to the double title is I believe undisputed -- Mr. Roden Noel. +I quote from an unpublished fragment of a published article +on Mr. Sharp's `Life of Browning'. + +== +`Browning's message is an integral part of himself as writer; +(whether as poet, since we agree that he is a poet, were surely +a too curious and vain discussion;) but some of his finest things +assuredly are the outcome of certain very definite personal convictions. +"The question," Mr. Sharp says, "is not one of weighty message, +but of artistic presentation." There seems to be no true contrast here. +"The primary concern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression" +-- no -- not the primary concern. Since the critic adds -- (for a poet) +"this vehicle is language emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music +by impassioned thought or sensation." Exactly -- "thought" it may be. +Now part of this same "thought" in Browning is the message. And therefore +it is part of his "primary concern". "It is with presentment," +says Mr. Sharp, "that the artist has fundamentally to concern himself." +Granted: but it must surely be presentment of SOMETHING. . . . +I do not understand how to separate the substance from the form +in true poetry. . . . If the message be not well delivered, +it does not constitute literature. But if it be well delivered, +the primary concern of the poet lay with the message after all!' +== + +More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the `message' +as judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression +or exposition of a vivid a priori religious faith +confirmed by positive experience; and it reflects as such +a double order of thought, in which totally opposite mental activities +are often forced into co-operation with each other. Mr. Sharp says, +this time quoting from Mr. Mortimer (`Scottish Art Review', December 1889): + +== +`His position in regard to the thought of the age is paradoxical, +if not inconsistent. He is in advance of it in every respect but one, +the most important of all, the matter of fundamental principles; +in these he is behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific +in their precision of analysis; the sudden conclusion +which he imposes upon them is transcendental and inept.' +== + +This statement is relatively true. Mr. Browning's positive reasonings +often do end with transcendental conclusions. They also start +from transcendental premises. However closely his mind might follow +the visible order of experience, he never lost what was for him +the consciousness of a Supreme Eternal Will as having existed before it; +he never lost the vision of an intelligent First Cause, as underlying +all minor systems of causation. But such weaknesses as were involved +in his logical position are inherent to all the higher forms +of natural theology when once it has been erected into a dogma. +As maintained by Mr. Browning, this belief held a saving clause, +which removed it from all dogmatic, hence all admissible +grounds of controversy: the more definite or concrete conceptions +of which it consists possessed no finality for even his own mind; +they represented for him an absolute truth in contingent relations to it. +No one felt more strongly than he the contradictions involved +in any conceivable system of Divine creation and government. +No one knew better that every act and motive which we attribute +to a Supreme Being is a virtual negation of His existence. +He believed nevertheless that such a Being exists; +and he accepted His reflection in the mirror of the human consciousness, +as a necessarily false image, but one which bears witness to the truth. + +His works rarely indicate this condition of feeling; it was not often +apparent in his conversation. The faith which he had contingently accepted +became absolute for him from all practical points of view; +it became subject to all the conditions of his humanity. +On the ground of abstract logic he was always ready to disavow it; +the transcendental imagination and the acknowledged limits of human reason +claimed the last word in its behalf. This philosophy of religion +is distinctly suggested in the fifth parable of `Ferishtah's Fancies'. + +But even in defending what remains, from the most widely accepted +point of view, the validity of Mr. Browning's `message', +we concede the fact that it is most powerful when conveyed +in its least explicit form; for then alone does it bear, +with the full weight of his poetic utterance, on the minds +to which it is addressed. His challenge to Faith and Hope imposes itself +far less through any intellectual plea which he can advance in its support, +than through the unconscious testimony of all creative genius +to the marvel of conscious life; through the passionate affirmation +of his poetic and human nature, not only of the goodness and the beauty +of that life, but of its reality and its persistence. + +We are told by Mr. Sharp that a new star appeared in Orion +on the night on which Robert Browning died. The alleged fact is disproved +by the statement of the Astronomer Royal, to whom it has been submitted; +but it would have been a beautiful symbol of translation, +such as affectionate fancy might gladly cherish if it were true. +It is indeed true that on that twelfth of December, +a vivid centre of light and warmth was extinguished upon our earth. +The clouded brightness of many lives bears witness to the poet spirit +which has departed, the glowing human presence which has passed away. +We mourn the poet whom we have lost far less than we regret the man: +for he had done his appointed work; and that work remains to us. +But the two beings were in truth inseparable. The man is always +present in the poet; the poet was dominant in the man. +This fact can never be absent from our loving remembrance of him. +No just estimate of his life and character will fail to give it weight. + + + + + + +Index + +[The Index is included only as a rough guide to what is in this book. +The numbers in brackets indicate the number of index entries: +as each reference, short or long, is counted as one, +the numbers may be misleading if observed too closely.] + + + +Abel, Mr. (musician) [1] +Adams, Mrs. Sarah Flower [2] +Albemarle, Lord [1] +Alford, Lady Marian [1] +Allingham, Mr. William [1] +American appreciation of Browning [1] +Ampere, M. [1] <Ampe\re> +Ancona [1] +Anderson, Mr. (actor) [1] +Arnold, Matthew [1] +Arnould, Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) [1] +Ashburton, Lady [1] +Asolo [4] +Associated Societies of Edinburgh, the [1] +Athenaeum, the (review of `Pauline') [2] +Audierne (Finisterre, Brittany) [1] +Azeglio, Massimo d' [1] + +Balzac's works, the Brownings' admiration of [2] +Barrett, Miss Arabel [4] +Barrett, Miss Henrietta (afterwards Mrs. Surtees Cook [Altham]) [2] +Barrett, Mr. (the poet's father-in-law) [3] +Barrett, Mr. Laurence (actor) [1] +Bartoli's `De' Simboli trasportati al Morale' [1] +Benckhausen, Mr. (Russian consul-general) [1] +Benzon, Mr. Ernest [1] +Beranger, M. [2] <Be/ranger> +Berdoe, Dr. Edward: his paper on `Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine' [1] +Biarritz [1] +Blackwood's Magazine (on `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon') [1] +Blagden, Miss Isa [5] +Blundell, Dr. (physician) [1] +Boyle, Dean (Salisbury) [1] +Boyle, Miss (niece of the Earl of Cork) [2] +Bridell-Fox, Mrs. [3] +Bronson, Mrs. Arthur [5] +Browning, Robert (grandfather of the poet): account of his life, + two marriages, and two families [1] +Browning, Mrs. (step-grandmother of the poet) [2] +Browning, Robert (father of the poet): marriage; + clerk in the Bank of England; comparison between him and his son; + scholarly and artistic tastes; simplicity and genuineness of his character; + his strong health; Mr. Locker-Lampson's account of him; + his religious opinions; renewed relations with his father's widow + and second family; death [10] +Browning, Mrs. (the poet's mother): her family; her nervous temperament + transmitted to her son; her death [3] +Browning, Mr. Reuben (the poet's uncle), + (incl. Lord Beaconsfield's appreciation of his Latinity) [2] +Browning, Mr. William Shergold (the poet's uncle), + (incl. his literary work) [2] +Browning, Miss Jemima (the poet's aunt) [1] +Browning, Miss (the poet's sister), + (incl. comes to live with her brother) [16] +Browning, Robert: 1812-33 -- the notion of his Jewish extraction disproved; + his family anciently established in Dorsetshire; his carelessness + as to genealogical record; account of his grandfather's life + and second marriage; his father's unhappy youth; his paternal grandmother; + his father's position; comparison of father and son; + the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; + qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard to health + throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; + great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his mother; + fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; + extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance + with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in circulation; + `Incondita', the production of the twelve-year-old poet; + introduction to Mr. Fox; his boyish love and lasting affection + for Miss Flower; first acquaintance with Shelley's and Keats' works; + his admiration for Shelley; home education under masters, + his manly accomplishments; his studies chiefly literary; love of home; + associates of his youth: Arnould and Domett; the Silverthornes; + his choice of poetry as a profession; other possible professions considered; + admiration for good acting; his father's support in his literary career; + reads and digests Johnson's Dictionary by way of preparation [37] +Browning, Robert: 1833-35 -- publication of `Pauline'; + correspondence with Mr. Fox; the poet's later opinion of it; + characteristics of the poem; Mr. Fox's review of it; other notices; + Browning's visit to Russia; contributions to the `Monthly Repository': + his first sonnet; the `Trifler' (amateur periodical); + a comic defence of debt; preparing to publish `Paracelsus'; friendship with + Count de Ripert-Monclar; Browning's treatment of `Paracelsus'; + the original Preface; John Forster's article on it in the `Examiner' [16] +Browning, Robert: 1835-38 -- removal of the family to Hatcham; + renewed intimacy with his grandfather's second family; + friendly relations with Carlyle; recognition by men of the day; + introduction to Macready; first meeting with Forster; + Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth; at the `Ion' supper; prospects of `Strafford'; + its production and reception; a personal description of him at this period; + Mr. John Robertson and the `Westminster Review' [11] +Browning, Robert: 1838-44 -- first Italian journey; a striking experience + of the voyage; preparations for writing other tragedies; + meeting with Mr. John Kenyon; appearance of `Sordello'; + mental developments; `Pippa Passes'; Alfred Domett on the critics; + `Bells and Pomegranates'; explanation of its title. + List of the poems; `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', written for Macready; + Browning's later account and discussion of the breach between him + and Macready; `Colombe's Birthday'; other dramas; The `Dramatic Lyrics'; + `The Lost Leader'; Browning's life before his second Italian journey; + in Naples; visit to Mr. Trelawney at Leghorn [19] +Browning, Robert: 1844-55 -- introduction to Miss Barrett; + his admiration for her poetry; his proposal to her; + reasons for concealing the engagement; their marriage; journey to Italy; + life at Pisa; Florence; Browning's request for appointment + on a British mission to the Vatican; settling in Casa Guidi; + Fano and Ancona; `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells; + birth of Browning's son, and death of his mother; wanderings in Italy: + the Baths of Lucca; Venice; friendship with Margaret Fuller Ossoli; + winter in Paris; Carlyle; George Sand. Close friendship + with M. Joseph Milsand; Milsand's appreciation of Browning; + new edition of Browning's poems; `Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; + the Essay on Shelley; summer in London; introduction to Dante G. Rossetti; + again in Florence; production of `Colombe's Birthday' (1853); + again at Lucca, Mr. and Mrs. W. Story; first winter in Rome; the Kembles; + again in London (1855): Tennyson, Ruskin [32] +Browning, Robert: 1855-61 -- publication of `Men and Women'; + `Karshook'; `Two in the Campagna'; another winter in Paris: Lady Elgin; + legacies to the Brownings from Mr. Kenyon; Mr. Browning's little son; + a carnival masquerade; Spiritualism; `Sludge the Medium'; + Count Ginnasi's clairvoyance; at Siena; Walter Savage Landor; + illness of Mrs. Browning; American appreciation of Browning's works; + his social life in Rome; last winter in Rome; Madame du Quaire; + Mrs. Browning's illness and death; the comet of 1861 [18] +Browning, Robert: 1861-69 -- Miss Blagden's helpful sympathy; + journey to England; feeling in regard to funeral ceremonies; + established in London with his son; Miss Arabel Barrett; + visit to Biarritz; origin of `The Ring and the Book'; + his views as to the publication of letters; new edition of his works, + selection of poems. Residence at Pornic; a meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's; + his literary position in 1865; his own estimate of it; + death of his father; with his sister at Le Croisic; + Academic honours: letter to the Master of Balliol (Dr. Scott); + curious circumstance connected with the death of Miss A. Barrett; + at Audierne; the uniform edition of his works; publication of + `The Ring and the Book'; inspiration of Pompilia [21] +Browning, Robert: 1869-73 -- `Helen's Tower'; at St.-Aubin; + escape from France during the war (1870); publication of + `Balaustion's Adventure' and `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'; + `Herve Riel' sold for the benefit of French sufferers by the war; + `Fifine at the Fair'; mistaken theories of that work; + `Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [8] +Browning, Robert: 1873-78 -- his manner of life in London; + his love of music; friendship with Miss Egerton-Smith; + summers spent at Mers, Villers, Isle of Arran, and La Saisiaz; + `Aristophanes' Apology'; `Pacchiarotto', `The Inn Album', + the translation of the `Agamemnon'; description of a visit to Oxford; + visit to Cambridge; offered the Rectorships of the Universities + of Glasgow and St. Andrews; description of La Saisiaz; + sudden death of Miss Egerton-Smith; the poem `La Saisiaz': + Browning's position towards Christianity; `The Two Poets of Croisic', + and Selections from his Works [13] +Browning, Robert: 1878-81 -- he revisits Italy; Spluegen; + Asolo; Venice; favourite Alpine retreats; friendly relations + with Mrs. Arthur Bronson; life in Venice; a tragedy at Saint-Pierre; + the first series of `Dramatic Idyls'; the second series, + `Jocoseria', and `Ferishtah's Fancies' [10] +Browning, Robert: 1881-87 -- the Browning Society; Browning's attitude + in regard to it; similar societies in England and America; + wide diffusion of Browning's works in America; lines for the gravestone + of Mr. Levi Thaxter; President of the New Shakspere Society, + and member of the Wordsworth Society; Honorary President of + the Associated Societies of Edinburgh; appreciation of his works in Italy; + sonnet to Goldoni; attempt to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, Venice; + Saint-Moritz; Mrs. Bloomfield Moore; at Llangollen; loss of old friends; + Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academy; publication of `Parleyings' [15] +Browning, Robert: his character -- constancy in friendship; + optimism and belief in a direct Providence; political principles; + character of his friendships; attitude towards his reviewers + and his readers; attitude towards his works; his method of work; + study of Spanish, Hebrew, and German; conversational powers + and the stores of his memory; nervous peculiarities; his innate kindliness; + attitude towards women; final views on the Women's Suffrage question [13] +Browning, Robert: his last years -- marriage of his son; + his change of abode; symptoms of declining strength; + new poems, and revision of the old; journey to Italy: Primiero and Venice; + last winter in England: visit to Balliol College; + last visit to Italy: Asolo once more; proposed purchase of land there; + the `Lines to Edward Fitzgerald'; with his son at Palazzo Rezzonico; + last illness; death; funeral honours in Italy; `Asolando' published + on the day of his death; his burial in Westminster Abbey; + the purport and tendency of his work [16] +Browning, Robert: letters to -- + Bainton, Mr. George (Coventry) [1] + Blagden, Miss Isa [12] + Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [8] + Flower, Miss [2] + Fox, Mr. [4] + Haworth, Miss E. F. [3] + Hickey, Miss E. H. [1] + Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the `Daily News') [2] + Hill, Mrs. Frank [1] + Keep, Miss [3] + Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [5] + Lee, Miss (Maidstone) [1] + Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [4] + Martin, Mrs. Theodore (afterwards Lady) [2] + Moulton-Barrett, Mr. G. [2] + Quaire, Madame du [1] + Robertson, Mr. John (editor of `Westminster Review', 1838) [1] + Scott, Rev. Dr. [1] + Skirrow, Mrs. Charles [4] + Smith, Mr. G. M. [3] +Browning, Robert: Works of -- + `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' [2] + `A Death in the Desert' [2] + `Agamemnon' [1] + `Andrea del Sarto' [1] + `Aristophanes' Apology' [1] + `Artemis Prologuizes' [1] + `Asolando' [5] + `At the Mermaid' [2] + `A Woman's Last Word' [1] + `Bad Dreams' [1] + `Balaustion's Adventure' [3] + `Bean Stripes' [1] + `Beatrice Signorini' [1] + `Bells and Pomegranates' (incl. meaning of the title, + and list of the dramas and poems) [7] + `Ben Karshook's Wisdom' [1] + `Bishop Blougram' [1] + `By the Fireside' [1] + `Childe Roland' [1] + `Christmas Eve and Easter Day' [2] + `Cleon' [1] + `Colombe's Birthday' [4] + `Crescentius, the Pope's Legate' [1] + `Cristina' [1] + `Dramatic Idyls' [4] + `Dramatic Lyrics' [1] + `Dramatis Personae' [5] + `Essay on Shelley' [1] + `Ferishtah's Fancies' [2] + `Fifine at the Fair' [2] + `Flute-Music' [1] + `Goldoni', sonnet to [1] + `Helen's Tower' (sonnet) [1] + `Herve Riel' (ballad) [2] + `Home Thoughts from the Sea' [1] + `How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' [1] + `In a Balcony' [2] + `In a Gondola' [2] + `Ivan Ivanovitch' [3] + `James Lee's Wife' [3] + `Jocoseria' [1] + `Johannes Agricola in Meditation' [1] + `King Victor and King Charles' [3] + `La Saisiaz' [4] + `Luria' [1] + `Madhouse Cells' [1] + `Martin Relph' [1] + `May and Death' [1] + `Men and Women' [3] + `Ned Bratts' [1] + `Numpholeptos' [1] + `One Word More' [2] + `Pacchiarotto' [3] + `Paracelsus' [8] + `Parleyings' [2] + `Pauline' [10] + `Pippa Passes' (incl. the Preface to) [5] + `Ponte dell' Angelo' [1] + `Porphyria's Lover' [1] + `Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' [3] + `Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [3] + `Rosny' [1] + `Saint Martin's Summer' [1] + `Saul' [1] + `Sludge the Medium' [2] + `Sordello' [7] + `Strafford' [3] + `The Epistle of Karshish' [1] + `The Flight of the Duchess' [1] + `The Inn Album' [3] + `The Lost Leader' [1] + `The Pied Piper of Hamelin' [1] + `The Return of the Druses' [3] + `The Ring and the Book' [3] + `The Two Poets of Croisic' [2] + `The Worst of It' [1] + `Two in the Campagna' [1] + `White Witchcraft' [1] + `Why I am a Liberal' (sonnet) [2] + `Women and Roses' [1] +Browning, Mrs. (the poet's wife: Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett): + Browning's introduction to her; her ill health; + the reasons for their secret marriage; causes of her ill health; + happiness of her married life; estrangement from her father; + her visit to Mrs. Theodore Martin; `Aurora Leigh': her methods of work; + a legacy from Mr. Kenyon; her feeling about Spiritualism; + success of `Aurora Leigh'; her sister's illness and death; + her own death; proposed reinterment in Westminster Abbey [14] +Browning, Mrs.: extracts from her letters -- on her husband's devotion; + life in Pisa, and on French literature; Vallombrosa; their acquaintances + in Florence; their dwelling in Piazza Pitti; `Father Prout's' cure + for a sore throat; apartments in the Casa Guidi; visits to Fano and Ancona; + Phelps's production of `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; + birth of her son; the effect of his mother's death on her husband; + wanderings in northern Italy; the neighbourhood of Lucca; + Venice; life in Paris (1851); esteem for her husband's family; + description of George Sand; the personal appearance of that lady; + her impression of M. Joseph Milsand; the first performance + of `Colombe's Birthday' (1853); Rome: death in the Story family; + Mrs. Sartoris and the Kembles; society in Rome; a visit to Mr. Ruskin; + about `Penini'; description of a carnival masquerade (Florence, 1857); + impressions of Landor; tribute to the unselfish character + of her father-in-law; on her husband's work; on the contrast + of his (then) appreciation in England and America; + Massimo d' Azeglio; on her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook); + on the death of Count Cavour [34] +Browning, Mr. Robert Wiedemann Barrett (the poet's son): his birth; + incidents of his childhood; his pet-name -- Penini, Peni, Pen; + in charge of Miss Isa Blagden on his mother's death; + taken to England by his father; manner of his education; + studying art in Antwerp; with his father in Venice (1885); his marriage; + purchase of the Rezzonico Palace (Venice); death of his father there [14] +Browning, Mrs. R. Barrett [2] +Browning, Mr. Robert Jardine (Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales) [1] +Browning Society, the: its establishment [1] +Brownlow, Lord [1] +Bruce, Lady Augusta [1] +Bruce, Lady Charlotte (wife of Mr. F. Locker) [1] +Buckstone, Mr. (actor) [1] +Buloz, M. [1] +Burne Jones, Mr. [2] +Burns, Major (son of the poet) [1] + +Californian Railway time-table edition of Browning's poems [1] +Cambo [1] +Cambridge, Browning's visit to [1] +Campbell Dykes, Mr. J. [6] +Carducci, Countess (Rome) [1] +Carlyle, Mr. Thomas [6] +Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas (incl. anecdote) [2] +Carnarvon, Lord [1] +Carnival masquerade, a [1] +Cartwright, Mr. and Mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3] +Casa Guidi (Browning's residence at Florence) [2] +Cattermole, Mr. [1] +Cavour, Count, death of [1] +Channel, Mr. (afterwards Sir William), and Frank [1] +Chapman & Hall, Messrs. (publishers) [2] +Cholmondeley, Mr. (Condover) [3] +Chorley, Mr. [1] +Cini, Dr. (Venice) [1] +Clairvoyance, an instance of [1] +Coddington, Miss Fannie (afterwards Mrs. R. Barrett Browning) [1] +Colvin, Mr. Sidney [1] +Corkran, Mrs. Fraser [2] +Cornaro, Catharine [3] +Cornhill Magazine: why `Herve Riel' appeared in it [2] +Corson, Professor [1] +Crosse, Mrs. Andrew [1] +`Croxall's Fables', Browning's early fondness for [1] +Curtis, Mr. [1] + +Dale, Mr. (actor) [1] +Davidson, Captain (of the `Norham Castle', 1838) [2] +Davies, Rev. Llewellyn [1] +Debt, Browning's mock defence of (in the `Trifler') [1] +Dickens, Charles [5] +Domett, Alfred (incl. `On a certain Critique of Pippa Passes') [3] +Dourlans, M. Gustave [1] +Doyle, Sir Francis H. [1] +Dufferin, Lord [1] +Dulwich Gallery [1] + +Eclectic Review, the (review of Browning's works) [1] +Eden, Mr. Frederic [1] +Egerton-Smith, Miss [2] +Elgin, Lady [3] +Elstree (Macready's residence) [2] +Elton, Mr. (actor) [1] +Engadine, the [2] +Examiner (review of `Paracelsus') [1] + +Fano [1] +`Father Prout' (Mr. Mahoney) [1] +Faucit, Miss Helen -- as Lady Carlisle in `Strafford'; as Mildred + in `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; as Colombe in `Colombe's Birthday' [3] + <see Martin, Lady> +Fiori, Margherita (Browning's nurse) [1] +Fisher, Mr. (artist) [1] +Fitzgerald, Mr. Edward [1] +Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [1] +Florence [6] +Flower, Miss [5] +Flower, Mr. Benjamin (editor of the `Cambridge Intelligencer') [1] +Fontainebleau [1] +Forster, Mr. John [11] +Fortia, Marquis de [1] +Fox, Miss Caroline [1] +Fox, Miss Sarah [1] +Fox, Mr. W. J. (incl. election for Oldham) [10] +Furnivall, Dr. [5] + +Gaisford, Mr., and Lady Alice [1] +Galuppi, Baldassaro [1] +Gibraltar [1] +Ginnasi, Count (Ravenna) [1] +Giustiniani-Recanati, Palazzo (Venice) [1] +Gladstone, Mr. [1] +Glasgow, University of [1] +Goldoni, Browning's sonnet to [1] +Goltz, M. (Austrian Minister at Rome) [1] +Gosse's `Personalia' [4] +Green, Mr. [1] +Gressoney Saint-Jean [1] +Guerande (Brittany) [1] +Guidi Palace (Casa Guidi) [1] +Gurney, Rev. Archer [1] + +Hanmer, Sir John (afterwards Lord Hanmer) [1] +Haworth, Miss Euphrasia Fanny [2] +Haworth, Mr. Frederick [1] +Hawthorne, Nathaniel [1] +Hazlitt, Mr. [1] +Heyermans, M. (artist; Antwerp) [1] +Hickey, Miss E. H. [2] +Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the `Daily News', 1884) [1] +Hood, Mr. Thomas [1] +Horne, Mr. [1] +Hugo, Victor [1] + +Ion, the Ion supper [1] + +Jameson, Mrs. Anna [1] +Jebb-Dyke, Mrs. [1] +Jerningham, Miss [1] +Jersey [1] +Jewsbury, Miss Geraldine [1] +Joachim, Professor [1] +Jones, Mr. Edward Burne [1] +Jones, Rev. Thomas [1] +Jowett, Dr. [3] + +Kean, Mr. Edmund [1] +Keats [1] +Keepsake, The [1] +Kemble, Mrs. Fanny [1] +Kenyon, Mr. John [5] +King, Mr. Joseph [1] +Kirkup, Mr. [2] +Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [2] + +Lamartine, M. de [1] +Lamb, Charles [1] +Landor, Walter Savage [5] +La Saisiaz [2] +Layard, Sir Henry and Lady [2] +Le Croisic (Brittany) [1] +Leigh Hunt [1] +Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [2] +`Les Charmettes' (Chambery: Rousseau's residence) [1] +Le Strange, Mrs. Guy [1] +Lewis, Miss (Harpton) [1] +Literary Gazette (review of `Pauline') [1] +Literary World, the Boston, U.S. (on `Colombe's Birthday') [1] +Llangollen [2] +Llantysilio Church [1] +Lloyd, Captain [1] +Locker, Mr. F. (now Mr. Locker-Lampson) [2] +Lockhart [1] +Lucca [4] +Lyons, Mr. (son of Sir Edmund) [1] +Lytton, Mr. (now Lord) [3] + +Maclise, Mr. (artist) [2] +Macready, Mr. [5] +Macready, Willy (eldest son of the actor): his illustrations + to the `Pied Piper' [1] +Mahoney, Rev. Francis (`Father Prout') [1] +Manning, Rev. Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) [1] +Manzoni Palace (Venice) [1] +Martin, Lady [3] +Martin, Sir Theodore [1] +Martineau, Miss [4] +Mazzini, Signor [1] +Melvill, Rev. H. (afterwards Canon) [2] +Meredith, Mr. George [1] +Mill, Mr. J. S. [3] +Milnes, Mr. Monckton (afterwards Lord Houghton) [4] +Milsand, M. Joseph [4] +Minich, Dr. (Venice) [1] +Mitford, Miss [3] +Mocenigo, Countess (Venice) [1] +Mohl, Madame [2] +Monthly Repository (incl. Browning's contributions to) [4] +Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield [2] +Morgan, Lady [1] +Morison, Mr. James Cotter [1] +Mortimer, Mr. [2] +Moulton-Barrett, Mr. George [3] +Moxon, Mr. (publisher) [4] +Murray, Miss Alma (actress) [1] +Musset, Alfred and Paul de [1] + +Naples [1] +National Magazine, the: Mrs. Browning's portrait in (1859) [1] +Nencioni, Professor (Florence) [1] +Nettleship, Mr. J. T. [1] +New Shakspere Society [1] +Noel, Mr. Roden [1] + +Ogle, Dr. John [1] +Ogle, Miss (author of `A Lost Love') [1] +Osbaldistone, Mr. (manager of Covent Garden Theatre, 1836) [1] +Ossoli, Countess Margaret Fuller [1] +Oxford (incl. Browning's visit to, 1877) [2] + +Palgrave, Mr. Francis [1] +Palgrave, Mr. Reginald [1] +Paris [2] +Patterson, Monsignor [1] +Phelps, Mr. (actor) [3] +Pirate-ship, wreck of [1] +Pisa [1] +Poetical contest, a Roman [1] +Pollock, Sir Frederick (1843) [1] +Pornic [2] +Powell, Mr. Thomas [2] +Power, Miss (editor of `The Keepsake') [1] +Powers, Mr. (American sculptor) [1] +Primiero [1] +Prinsep, Mr. Val [6] +Pritchard, Captain [1] +Procter, Mr. Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall) [4] + +Quaire, Madame du [2] +Quarles' Emblemes [1] + +Ravenna [1] +Ready, the two Misses, preparatory school [3] +Ready, Rev. Thomas (Browning's first schoolmaster) [2] +Regan, Miss [1] +Reid, Mr. Andrew [1] +Relfe, Mr. John (musician) [1] +Rezzonico Palace (Venice), the [2] +Richmond, Rev. Thomas [1] +Ripert-Monclar, Count de [4] +Robertson, Mr. John (editor of `Westminster Review', 1838) [1] +Robinson, Miss Mary (now Mrs. James Darmesteter) [1] +Rome [2] +Rossetti, Mr. Dante Gabriel (incl. death of his wife) [4] +Ruskin, Mr. [1] +Russell, Lady William [1] +Russell, Mr. Odo (afterwards Lord Ampthill) [2] + +Sabatier, Madame [1] +Saleve, the [2] +Sand, George [2] +Sartoris, Mrs. [4] +Saunders & Otley, Messrs. [2] +Scott, Rev. Dr. (Master of Balliol, 1867) [1] +Scotti, Mr. [1] +Scottish Art Review, the, Mr. Mortimer's `Note on Browning' in [1] +Seraverra [1] +Sharp, Mr. [4] +Shelley (incl. Browning's Essay on; his grave) [4] +Shrewsbury, Lord [1] +Sidgwick, Mr. A. [1] +Siena [2] +Silverthorne, Mrs. [2] +Simeon, Sir John [1] +Smith, Miss (second wife of the poet's grandfather) [1] +Smith, Mr. George Murray [1] +Southey [1] +Spezzia [1] +Spiritualism (incl. a pretending medium) [2] +Spluegen [1] <Splu"gen> +St. Andrews University [1] +St.-Aubin (M. Milsand's residence) [2] +St.-Enogat (near Dinard) [1] +St.-Pierre la Chartreuse (incl. a tragic occurrence there) [2] +Stanley, Dean [1] +Stanley, Lady Augusta [1] +Stendhal, Henri [2] +Sterling, Mr. John [1] +Stirling, Mrs. (actress) [1] +Story, Mr. and Mrs. William [7] +Sturtevant, Miss [1] +Sue, Eugene [1] + +Tablets, Memorial [3] +Tait's Magazine [1] +Talfourd, Serjeant [3] +Taylor, Sir Henry [1] +Tennyson, Mr. Alfred (afterwards Lord Tennyson) [2] +Tennyson, Mr. Frederick [1] +Thackeray, Miss Annie [1] +Thackeray, Mr. W. M. [2] +Thaxter, Mrs. (Celia) (Boston, U.S.) [1] +Thaxter, Mr. Levi (Boston, U.S.) [1] +Thomson, Mr. James: his application of the term `Gothic' + to Browning's work [1] +Tittle, Miss Margaret [1] +Trelawney, Mr. E. J. (1844) [1] +Trifler, The (amateur magazine) [1] +True Sun, the (review of `Strafford') [1] + +Universo, Hotel dell' (Venice) [1] + +Vallombrosa [1] +Venice [6] +Vigna, Dr. da (Venice) [1] + +Wagner [1] +Warburton, Mr. Eliot [1] +Watts, Dr. [1] +Westminster, Dean of [2] +Widman, Counts [1] +Wiedemann, Mr. William [1] +Williams, Rev. J. D. W. (vicar of Bottisham, Cambs.) [1] +Wilson (Mrs. Browning's maid) [6] +Wilson, Mr. Effingham (publisher) [1] +Wiseman, Mrs. (mother of Cardinal Wiseman) [1] +Wolseley, Lady [1] +Wolseley, Lord [1] +Woolner, Mr. [1] +Wordsworth [3] +Wordsworth Society, the [2] + + + + + +End of Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by A. Orr + diff --git a/old/orrbr10.zip b/old/orrbr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..903af7a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/orrbr10.zip |