"As for the visits to your studio, be assured they are truly a delight to me, for the old aspirations come thickly back to memory when I see you at work as—who knows but I myself might have worked once? Only it was not to be; but these are consolations—seeing that I am anyhow"Yours sympathisingly,"Robert Browning."
"As for the visits to your studio, be assured they are truly a delight to me, for the old aspirations come thickly back to memory when I see you at work as—who knows but I myself might have worked once? Only it was not to be; but these are consolations—seeing that I am anyhow
"Yours sympathisingly,
"Robert Browning."
The aspirations he speaks of he had in former years sought to satisfy. When living in Florence he had arranged the large corner room on the first floor of the Casa Guidi as a studio. There he used to make life-size drawings of the human figure from casts, working on a specially prepared canvas, which enabled him to rub out his studies and to replace them by others. He never painted; form had more attraction for him than colour. When in Rome he worked several hours daily in Storey's studio, and when he returned to England he intended taking up modelling seriously. He did indeed begin in Warwick Crescent, but he eventually abandoned the attempt, carried away by mightier impulses. The regret that he had not been able to cultivate his taste for the plastic art, would however often find expression in words.
What he might have done as an artist is a matter of speculation, but he certainly made a most obliging and excellent sitter, as I can vouch for, having been one of those who had the privilege of painting him. He sat for me in 1884, and my portrait has found a permanent place in the Armour Institute in Chicago.
As my shell-picture advanced, I became ambitious to find a better name than the one I had given it temporarily, and as usual Browning was consulted. Isaac Henderson, the novelist of "Agatha Page" fame, happened to be at the Studio, and between them the matter was at first facetiously discussed. On this occasion my name had the proud distinction of drawing from Browning the only pun I ever heard him make. "Why not call itmore shellsbyMoschels?" he said.
Later on he quoted various passages from poems that seemed to fit my subject, but he felt himself that they were only partially suited to it. In the evening, recalling our conversation, I wrote to him that, knowing as I did exactly what I was trying to express on canvas, I felt sure it would be difficult to find lines quite adaptable to my meaning. "Why not," I asked, "in default of a real poet, sign an imaginary name, Grelice di Napoli, for instance?" Grelice was meant for an Italian version of the name which I had composed when I first met theGre-te who was to link her name to that of Fe-lix. The pseudonym was adopted, and we are best known to our friends in every part of the world as "The Grelix."
I suggested then that Grelice di Napoli should have said something of this kind:—
"And as I walked along those lovely shores, and breathed the air of balmy climes, I waking dreamt of living forms that wedded opalescent shells; of peace, and rest, and blissful harmonies."
"And as I walked along those lovely shores, and breathed the air of balmy climes, I waking dreamt of living forms that wedded opalescent shells; of peace, and rest, and blissful harmonies."
I was at work the next day when the post brought Browning's answer, and as I read it Ibroke into a hearty fit of laughter.Hehad written five lines of poetry, and signed them:Felix Moscheles. They ran thus:—
A day or two later he came to bring me another version which, he explained, he thought I should "like better." This was adopted, and the picture was christened, "The Isle's Enchantress," and described by the following lines:—
The day was approaching when, with other work, I was to show that "Isle's Enchantress." Picture show-day they call it. Soft-soap day would be more correct, for every artist expects his friends to give him as much of flattery as they can find it in their consciences to give. And as a rule consciences are elastic; a little encouragement from the artist goes a long way, and, once he satisfies his friends that he is of an unsuspecting nature, they will lay it on thick in the pleasantest of ways.
To be sure the day brings its little trials too, but of those another time.
It had occurred to me that some of the friends I had invited to meet my Enchantress, might liketo have a copy of Browning's lines; so I went round one evening to 29 De Vere Gardens to ask whether he had any objection to their being printed.
"None whatever," he said, in answer to my question.
I thanked him and added, "To be sure I want to put your name to them."
"Oh, you can't do that," he said; "they are not mine, they are yours."
"Mine! Why, you know,Icouldn't write verse to save my life."
"Ah, but you did; you sent me the substance and put it into blank verse."
"Blank verse!"—Blank was my astonishment, and I felt like the man in Molière when he was told he had been speaking prose all his life.
Well, we sat by the fireside in that drawing-room of his and discussed the matter, and he would have it that I was the author and that he had only put my idea into shape.
"If I had suggested alterations in your picture," he said, "or if I had advised you to introduce a coral-reef here and a dolphin there, would that have justified me in signingyourpicture?"
"No, perhaps not," I agreed, "but if you had laid on the last coat of paint, the one the public was to see, you certainly could have done so."
And so the skirmishing went on with varying fortunes, till, by some happy fluke, I hit upon an argument which settled the matter in my favour.
"Well," I said, "I can't give you a reason for it—in fact I have never been able to understand whyit is so—but it is an undeniable fact that the publicwillmake a marked difference between your style and mine, and if your version is to be adopted, it must stand in your name."
"Very well, then," he said, "have it your own way. I am sure you are welcome to anything I can do for you."
"Truly kind you are, and truly grateful am I, and plucky too I beg you to believe, for I don't care a pin if people do say: 'There goes Moscheles hanging on to the tail of Pegasus!'"
I meant it then, and I mean it to-day. You may laugh if you like, but I have the best of it; it isn't everybody who can boast of having written five lines of poetrytogether with Robert Browning.
The picture I have now. It just fits a recess in my dining-room, measuring about five feet by seven. I daily sit opposite it at meals, and when I watch the golden rays of the sun as they come pouring through the garden-window, and steal across the canvas, I see a beautiful picture which I certainly never painted.
First the light plays on the flowing hair where it dips into the water, and gives it just the aureate tints I tried in vain to mix; then steadily creeping on, it illuminates, first the closed eyes and the parted lips, then the body and the seaweed straggling across it, and presently it reaches the urchin in the Concha, and would fain make me imagine that I could paint an iridescent shell and a child of flesh and blood.
Those are moments of happy delusions and Iacknowledge it gratefully, for it is not vouchsafed to every one to paint his pictures together with the blessed sun, any more than it is to write his poems together with Robert Browning, or indeed to sit down daily to a square meal, and to have before him a canvas into which he can weave pleasant memories of the Past.
* * * * * *
A portrait I was painting of Sir James Ingham, the Bow Street magistrate, led to the following incident. I was telling my sitter how great were the difficulties I had to contend with as a host and an impresario when I had a musical At home at the Studio.
Which of one's talented friends should be asked first? Should Signora Cantilena come before or after Madame Pianota? Singers to be sure are entitled to most consideration. They are invariably affected by the weather, whilst the pianists are only out of practice. If I want la Signora to sing at about eleven o'clock, I begin asking her to favour us at a quarter-past ten, allowing her from forty to fifty minutes to get over the insurmountable difficulties which, just to-day, stand in the way of her acceding to my request. But then, in the kindness of her heart, when once she begins, she is inclined to go on till she has successfully illustrated the wonderful variety of her talent. And there is Heir Thumpen Krasch, who is waiting all the while to get to the piano, and when he is there, he is naturally disinclined to play his best pieces first, and reserves his Monster-Rhapsody on Wagner's Trilogy, the success of theseason, for what I call the after-end. As for myself, I forget my duties and go into raptures, delighted as I am to think that my friends sing and play their best in the genial atmosphere of the Studio. But oh, the other virtuosi who are waiting to be heard! "Ote-toi, que je m'y mette" is the motto of every true artist, and my friends are all true artists.
"Yes," said Sir James, "those troubles are as old as the hills. Don't you recollect the lines Horace wrote two thousand years ago?" and he quoted them.
"Splendid! I wish you would write them down for me; my Latin is rather rusty, and I should like to remember them."
So he wrote:—
The same day Browning came in, and seeing the lines, he took up a pen and wrote without pausing to think—
How rapidly his mind worked I had occasional opportunities of witnessing. He would let us givehim a number of rhymes, perhaps twenty or thirty, to be embodied in an impromptu poem. This he would read to us just once, and, as he spoke the last words, he would ruthlessly tear it up into small fragments and scatter them to the winds. Nothing would induce him to stay his iconoclastic hand, and on such occasions it only remained for me to regret that I was not some sensitive plate, some uncanny Edisonian Poetophone, to preserve the spontaneous creation of his mind.
"Do you ever listen to Reciters?" my wife asked him one day; "I mean to Reciters of Browning's poems?"
"Oh, I do the Reciting myself," he said, "when I am amongst a few sympathetic friends. I will read to you with pleasure. What have you got?"
The few sympathetic ones were not wanting that Sunday afternoon; I gave him the volume of "Selections" from his poems, and turning over the pages he said, "As we are in an artist's studio, I will read 'Andrea del Sarto.'"
There was not a shadow of declamation in his reading. For the time being he was just Andrea talking to his wife, the "Faultless Painter" as they called him, who knew his own faults but had not the strength to battle with them. It was Andrea himself we were in touch with, his dreamy sadness that we shared. His yearnings for requited love, his longings for the unattainable in art, drew us to him, and we would have helped him had we been able. That sorry business with the King of France was disgraceful—there was no denying it. Headmitted himself that he had abused the king's friendship and misused his moneys, but surely for such a man as was Del Sarto, something could be done to settle matters, and once more to turn his genius to account.
And that Lucretia, his wife! his "serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!" Whywillshe not answer? The right words from her spoken now might yet make of him the good man and the great artist that a God may create, but that a woman must consecrate. One just felt as if one could give her a good shaking, if only to make her break the aggravating silence she so imperturbably maintains whilst he so pathetically pleads. As for the cousin, one would have liked to go out and give him a sound thrashing to stop his whistling once for all.
We were so impressed at the close of his reading that for a moment we remained hushed in a silence which none of us cared to break. He looked round at us, anxious lest he should not have brought home his meaning, and said, "Have I made it clear?"
It is rather a sudden transition from Del Sarto to myself, and from "sober pleasant Fiesole" in the background, to the Royal Academy in Piccadilly; but all artists of all times, the little ones as well as the great ones, have their grievous disappointments, and one place is as good or as bad as another to crush some of their fondest hopes.
Annually then, towards the end of April, when the judges at Burlington House had spoken, Browning had his visits of condolence to pay. How helpfuland encouraging he would be, none of as, I am sure, could forget. I thanked him on one occasion, telling him that I valued his good opinion more than any other man's, and reminding him of his own words:—
The one wise man always found a word of encouragement—
"Beware of despairing thoughts," he answered. "The darkest days, wait but till to-morrow, will have passed away."
In his ever simple, unassuming way he compared himself to me, recalling his failures, and telling me how for many years not a poem of his was read or could boast of a publisher willing to take it, and how now 3500 copies of the new edition of his works had been sold in a month. "To be sure, one must live long enough," he added, and quoted Philip von Artevelde's first speech, in which he says so many die before they've had a chance, and—
Unvarying kindness too he showed me when, as he put it, I "entrusted him with a piece of business." Such a piece was my preface to the Mendelssohn Letters. In this he made six or eight corrections, suggestions he insisted on calling them, when he brought the paper back himself that he might explain verbally why he had substituted a word hereand added another there. At the end he had pencilled: "Excellent. R. B.," and I felt as proud as a peacock and as happy as a schoolboy.
When the book finally came out he was in Italy, and I sent him a copy of it.
It was characteristic of him that his kind heart prompting him, and his unlimited powers of expression aiding him, he would, even on the most trivial occasions, write in the warmest and the most affectionate terms. So he did when he answered acknowledging the receipt of the book, and mentioning the photo of a picture which I had painted for A. P. Rockwell, a dear friend of mine and a great fur-merchant in New York. It showed a life-size female figure stretched on a tiger-skin and frankly nude, but for the white Mongolian and other furs thrown around and about her.
He dates from Casa Alvisi, Canal Grande, Venezia, October, 29, '88, and after a few introductory sentences, he says:—
"I concluded that on leaving Scotland you would proceed elsewhere than homewards, and it seemed best to wait till I was sure of finding you. Even now—I am sorry exceedingly to be still far from sure that this will go to you safely housed within the old easy reach of De Vere Gardens—for there shall I live and probably die—not in the Rezzonico, which is not mine but Pen's: I am staying here only as the guest of a dearest of friends, Mrs. Bronson, who has cared for the comfort of my sister and myself this many a year. No; once missing my prize of the superlatively beautiful Manzoni Palazzo,I have not been tempted to try a fresh spring unbaulked by rascality. So much for the causes of my tardiness in thanking you most heartily for the charming Lady of the Furs: why not give her that title? Everybody here paid the due tribute to her beauty and your skill. You promised I should witness the beginning and ending of such another picture—and it is not to be—if things are as I apprehend. Wherever you go, may all good go with you and your delightful wife; my two precious friends!
"And now here is a second occasion of sincere thanksgiving. Your letter arrived yesterday—and I supposed that the gift referred to had been consigned to the Kensington house: whereas, while I sat preparing the paper whereon to write, came the very book itself—the dearest of boons just now. The best way will be to thank you at once, and be certain of finding plenty more to thank you for when I have read what will interest me more than anything else I can imagine in the way of biography. Let me squeeze your hand in spirit, over the many miles, this glorious day—a sun floods the room from the open window, while an autumnal freshness makes it more than enjoyable, almost intoxicating. In half-an-hour I shall be on the Lido—perhaps in a month I may cower by the fireside in Kensington. Meanwhile and ever, my dear Moscheles, believe me, gratefully and affectionately yours,
"Robert Browning."
He was with me one day when a distinguished German officer, Graf D., unexpectedly came in. Thecount was in London to attend some grand military pageant organised for the benefit of the German Emperor. His Majesty, on a visit to his royal grandmother, was being entertained with a right royal show of death-dealing ships and other instruments of warfare. He seems to have enjoyed it thoroughly, and in return for attentions shown him, he was graciously pleased to raise the aforesaid grandmother to the dignity of "Colonel of the First Regiment of Dragoons, stationed in Berlin." As a specimen of the officers to serve under her, Graf D. was ordered to London. He told us that he had dined twice at the royal table, and that he had found the ceremonial on such occasions rather less exacting than in Germany; the Queen herself was somewhat reserved, but the rest of the company were pretty free to talk or to laugh as they liked.
I had questioned him on the subject, recollecting how indignant Rubinstein was at the hushed silence prevailing in the presence of her Majesty. He could not and would not stand it, he said, and spoke out as he would have done elsewhere.
When D. had gone, I told Browning that the count was not only a gallant soldier, but a man to be held in great esteem, on account of his moral courage. It was a bold thing for a man in his position to side with the Jews at a time when the antisemitic movement was at its height. That an officer and a scion of a noble family should associate with bourgeois of the Jewish persuasion as he unhesitatingly did, was an unheard-of thing.No wonder it should be commented upon amongst his brother officers. Whatever their prejudices may have been, he had once for all checked their utterance by stating in unmistakable language that he would tolerate no disparaging remarks on any one of those whose houses he frequented.
Browning was naturally in sympathy with the count's broader views and his chivalrous conduct. "Is it possible," he said, "that men should seek to sever themselves from those who are astheyare—all made of mortal clay!"
When I alluded to the difference in appearance, and especially in manners, so marked in Germany between the Christians and the Jews of a certain class, and sought thereby to explain the repugnance these so often inspire, he said—
"Naturally; their characteristics would become more intensified through long exclusion from other groups of men; their manners would be unlike those of others with whom they were not allowed to mix. No wonder if, hedged in as they were, those peculiarities took offensive shapes. Does not every development, to become normal, require space? Why, our very foot, if you restrict and hedge it in, throws out a corn in self-defence!"
On the 7th of May, it was in 1889, Browning came in after luncheon. "It is my birthday to-day," he said, "and so I came to sit with you and your wife for a while, if you'll let me."
I rejoiced, and at once thought of work in his presence, always a source of double pleasure to me. My wife thought of the pleasure it would give her tooffer him some little present by way of marking the happy day.
"I have been out model-hunting this morning," I told him, "and have caught the very specimen I wanted for the boy lolling against the door of the public-house in the 'Drink' picture. I was in luck; for I went to Victoria Station with the definite purpose of finding a typical 'Cheeky,' and I found him. He is just having a square meal as an introduction to business, and I am burning to paint him and his cheek. Will you come in with me and let me start?"
"The very thing I should like to see you do," said Browning, and we adjourned to the Studio. Little Cheeky, the veriest young vagabond, uncombed and untamed, cap over ear and cigarette-stump in mouth, was happily transferred to canvas in an hour or two, and his effigy has ever since remained with me in memory of the friend who sat by me on that day. In the meanwhile my wife had bethought herself of a little piece of antique embroidery framed and under glass, which, but lately, we had picked up in Rome; that seemed worthy to be offered to Browning, and she pressed him to accept it, but in vain. Warmly she persisted, firmly he resisted. At last, and lest he should displease or pain her, he said—
"Well, my dear friend, let us make a compromise. You keep it for me for a year and give it to me on my next birthday."
We have it still! He was never to see that next birthday!
He died on the 12th of December in the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice.
When Pen's telegram with the fatal news reached me I was standing by another deathbed.
On the last day of the year 1889 he was buried in Westminster Abbey. It had been proposed to transfer the remains of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Florence to be laid by the side of her husband, but the idea was abandoned as not being likely to meet with the approval of the municipality and the English colony of that city. Browning himself had never expressed any wish on the subject of his resting-place, further than mentioning on one occasion the Norwood Cemetery as a fitting place, and saying that, if he died in Paris, he wished to be buried near his father.
Shortly after his death I painted a water-colour of his study in De Vere Gardens. Everything had remained intact. "All here—only our poet's away," as he says in "Asolando." The empty chair by the writing-table which bears his initials, the desk which he looked upon as a relic. His father had used it when a lad, and had taken it with him on his voyage to the West Indies. The poet possessed it from his earliest boyhood, and used it all his life; everything he wrote in England, so his sister told me, was written on that desk. The little dumb keyboard I have already mentioned in the first of these pages; it had five notes over which he would mechanically run his fingers. He had a way too of beating a tattoo on his knee, or he would just for a few seconds mark time, moving his arm backwardsand forwards. Sometimes he would squeeze up his eyes and look out of the window, or he would take up some little object and scrutinise it closely, whilst his thoughts were busy elsewhere.
On his table lay a book he had shown me as one he treasured: a little Greek Bible. On the last leaf was written: "My wife's book and mine." Pictures by his son hung on the walls; so too a portrait of his wife when a little girl, by Hayter; one of Hope End, the house in which she lived, and one of the tomb in the English Cemetery in Florence where she lies buried. Another reminiscence of her is the low chair to the right of the table; she at all times liked low seats, and this chair was a favourite with her.
Among the things on the walls was a pen-and-ink drawing of Tennyson by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. On the back of it Browning wrote—
"Tennyson read his poem of 'Maud' to E. B. B., R. B., Arabella, and Rossetti on the evening of September 27, 1855, at 13 Dorset Street, Manchester Square. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson as he sat reading to E. B. B., who occupied the other end of the sofa.—R. B., March 6, 1874, 19 Warwick Crescent."μεταπίπτοντοςδαίμονος
"Tennyson read his poem of 'Maud' to E. B. B., R. B., Arabella, and Rossetti on the evening of September 27, 1855, at 13 Dorset Street, Manchester Square. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson as he sat reading to E. B. B., who occupied the other end of the sofa.—R. B., March 6, 1874, 19 Warwick Crescent."
On the drawing is written in Mrs. Browning's hand—
The larger bookcase which made up the background for my drawing, he designed himself. The fine old oak-carvings he had bought many years ago in Florence, where they had adorned the refectory ofsome old monastery; when he got them home, he put them together, with the assistance of an ordinary carpenter, according to his own design, chalked out on the carpet, and ever after he took great pride in the result. The bookcase held to the end of his days the many rare and beautiful volumes he prized so highly.
Another bookcase he wanted to accommodate piles of books he had brought from Warwick Crescent when he moved to De Vere Gardens. I suggested a certain one that had belonged to Sheridan and was now for sale at Joshua Binns's, then the king of dilapidators. But he preferred a severely useful piece of furniture in mahogany which we found close to my studio at Taylor's Depository. Books he would always handle very carefully. He would never leave a book open or place it face downwards—or, worst of all in his eyes, deface it by turning the corner of a page. His strong dislike of the imperfect was characteristic. Anything mended he objected to, and he would rather a thing he valued were broken outright than chipped or cracked.
The manuscript of "Aurora Leigh" was a treasure he guarded lovingly. It had been lost with other things in a trunk forwarded from Italy to England, but, when search already seemed hopeless, it was found in Marseilles. I have heard him say, referring to the incident: "She thought more of Pen's laces and collars than of that book." He wanted to have the manuscript bound, but could not make up his mind to part with it even for that purpose. Threetimes he replaced it on the shelf before he let it go. It is now in Pen's possession, as is the MS. of "Asolando," both eventually to be left to Balliol College, Oxford, as others already bequeathed to that institution.
After his wife's death, Browning took the house in Warwick Crescent, originally to find a place for the furniture which he had had forwarded from Florence; the neighbourhood was selected because a sister of Mrs. Browning's, Arabella Moulton Barrett, lived in Delamere Terrace, but he strongly disliked the house, and always had a wish finally to settle in the Kensington district. It was, however, only towards the close of his life that he left Warwick Crescent and made his home in De Vere Gardens.
Stiff staircases such as he found there he never objected to; in fact, whether at home or when travelling, he had a marked preference for being located in one of the upper storeys. So it was on the second floor he had established his library and study.
His sister, Miss Browning, to whom so frequent reference is made in his letters as Sarianna, lived with him and ever devoted herself to the task of securing his comfort and happiness. She would write out his poems and otherwise make herself useful as his amanuensis; frequent too were the opportunities the brother and sister took to travel together, and when abroad, they would enjoy nothing better than a walk of several hours.
The last time I saw him at the Studio, he had come to tell me that he was shortly leaving for Italy.He spoke with enthusiasm of Asolo, describing its beauties in glowing colours, and he told me how, some forty years ago, as a young man, he had reached it when on a walking tour through the Venetian province.
It was the old tower crowning the hills, the Rocca, at that time tenanted by hawks, that had made the most lasting impression on his mind. He had been there again in later years with his sister, and now he was elated at the prospect of once more revisiting it and the picturesque old city he loved so well. He went, and it was there he wrote his last work, "Asolando."
Prompted by the desire to ramble over the ground he had so lately trodden, and to gather what evidence I could of his passage, I went to Venice and Asolo in the following year, and painted a series of water-colours (some fourteen or fifteen) in illustration of notes I took during my stay in these places. Some of those notes may not be out of place here to complete my sketch of Browning.[18]
A couple of hours' ride by rail took me from Venice to Cornuda, two more by diligence to my destination. Leaving the plain an excellent road, cut into the flanks of the hill on which the town is built, soon brought me to the summit. I had onlyrisen six or seven hundred feet, but a magnificent view greeted me on all sides. "In clear weather you can see Venice," the driver told me; but I was anxious to look forward, not backward, and alighting at the entrance to a narrow street, I walked along theSotto-portici, formed by a series of quaint thick-set arches supporting the upper storeys. A few steps brought me to the house in which, as the tablet on the wall says, had lived the "Somma Poeta."
"What a curious place to select!" was my first thought as I stood at the door of the old house. I walked up twelve or fifteen hard stone steps, grasping the banister to guide myself in the dark, and was soon warmly welcomed by Signora Nina Tabacchi, as, passing through the kitchen, I was ushered into the sitting-room. "Scrupulously clean and neat," was my next impression, but how plain! The room was only a piece of the kitchen partitioned off, a glass door and window separating the two. The thin cotton curtain might possibly screen the mysteries of the culinary process from the poet's eye, but his ear must have been caught by occasional sounds of hacking and chopping, and certainly no kettle could have boiled, no wood could crackle, or incense arise from that adjacent hearth without making itself distinctly noticeable. Such was his study and his drawing-room, amultum in parvoabout twelve feet square.
I had ample time to study my surroundings, for I spent some weeks in the rooms vacated by the poet. The furniture was of the good old lodging-house type. In the centre of the little sitting-room was around pedestal table, half of which was devoted to Browning's papers; on the other half, luncheon was served for himself and his sister. A full-length sofa, uncompromisingly hard, took up the greater part of one wall, and a kind of sideboard stood opposite. On the chiffonnier, between the two windows, rested the looking-glass, and half-a-dozen mahogany chairs, cane-bottomed and severe backed, completed the arrangements. On the flesh-coloured walls hung a series of prints, illustrating the history of Venice. Doges disporting themselves in most conventional attitudes, the vanquished kneeling before the victors, gave one the impression that history involves a great amount of bowing and scraping. In pleasant contrast with such triumphs were the domestic joys as depicted by the photographer. Looking up from his papers, Browning's eye must have rested on that shell-adorned frame which encircled the usual specimens of family portraits. There were the inevitable aunts and uncles, the young man pressing into the focus, to meet the clever dog seated on the table by his side, and a typical presentment of the mother and child as conceived by the lens.
To Luigi, the landlady's son, Browning was from the first very friendly; but how this lad, ever on the alert to make himself useful, could have kept any length of time in his good graces, is a mystery to me. He owns that on one or two occasions the sturdy master sent him flying, when he would imprudently insist on opening the door for him, or on lighting him down the dark staircase.
On his arrival Browning had bought a plain glassinkstand and a few wooden penholders; they were still there, on a blue-patterned china plate, just as he had left them. I reverently put them aside, but I might as well have used them; for just as he would never allow me to make the slightest fuss of him, the living friend, so he would not have expected me to stand on ceremony with the inanimate objects that survived him. A pen was just a pen, as "A flower is just a flower."
Asolo boasted of a theatre, and the performances must have been none of the worst, for, out of twenty, Browning only missed three. He would sit in his friend Mrs. Bronson's box, and follow the actors as they told the story of Hamlet, Othello, or Mary Queen of Scots, or as they played Goldoni's popular comedies. The performance usually wound up with a short farce. From that he would escape, leaving Gigi (that is Luigi), who was his frequent companion, to do the screaming laughter. About half-past eleven or twelve he got home, and by five or six in the morning he was up again. His bedroom was about 16 feet by 9, and 10 feet high. A really good rococo design, speaking of an artistic past, embossed and picked out in grey, decorated the whitewashed walls. Rafters brought out the irregularities of the ceiling, and bricks, very much wrinkled and worn with age, paved the floor. Signora Tabacchi had offered to procure a carpet, but had met with an energetic refusal. There was a funny little looking-glass, and a wash-hand stand with a diminutive basin, and over the glass door a towel was neatly tacked to insure privacy.
And what in this land of vistas greeted the poet's eye as he opened his shutters? A blank wall and another set of shutters. They would be opened presently to be sure when the sun left the neighbour's wall, and then a flood of light would burst into the centre corridor of his house, and the reflections from the marble floor would carry the quivering rays along to another window beyond, through which you caught a lovely glimpse of the hills on the other side of the valley. In that particular glimpse Browning delighted. When his son came to Asolo, he was struck, as I was later, by the uncongenial outlook.
"Wait, Pen, till they open those shutters," Browning had said. Pen waited and was duly impressed and pleased. It was well so, for had it been otherwise, his father's pleasure would have been incomplete.
The people of Asolo are of the kindliest nature; simple, peaceful folk, hard-working and contented. Perched on high in their picturesque dwellings, they seem raised above at least some of our terrestrial troubles. They live sheltered by solid masses of mediæval stone, and surrounded by the gardens they cultivate; the vine is here, there, and everywhere, zig-zagging along rough stone terraces and gliding down the slopes, or creeping into the windows. A tangle of massive foliage springs from one knows not where, large leaves that dwarf all else elbow their way to the front, and here and there in their midst a big yellow gourd comfortably rests on a stone cornice or on an artificial prop.
The fig leaves, though certainly overshadowed by their bulky neighbours, hold their own in the universal struggle for air and space. And somewhere in the distance is a little graceful figure stretching upward to train the vine in the way it should go, and right or wrong you straightway jump to the conclusion, if you are an artist, that that figure belongs to a beautiful girl.
The children are out of doors; so are the pigs. Whilst the latter always seem grumbling and dissatisfied, the former are as happy as sunshine andpolentacan make a child. The sight of an approaching stranger carrying the artist's paraphernalia, at once suggests to a sturdy urchin the idea that he should rush for a chair, and to the woman at her door, that she should offer you a hearty welcome. No wonder if some of these good people were destined to entertain an angel or a poet unawares. Browning might not have manifested himself as such, but there was something about him that endeared him to all he met. Faces brightened as I spoke of him; voices deepened as they answered, "Ah poveretto!how kind he was—proprio buono!Here he used to sit and chat with us;" or, "I showed him the way to the Rocca eleven years ago." This last remark came from the postmaster, who took the deepest interest in everything concerning Browning. He was very anxious that I should paint a picture of the post-office, as being the historical place the poet had many a time visited. "It was over that counter of mine," he said, "that his last work, the immortal 'Asolando,' was handed.On me he relied to transmit it with the greatest care, for he assured me he had kept no copy of it. Yes, it went per book-post, registered and addressed, I well recollect, to the publisher Mr. Smith, of London, and he was surprised it should cost so little—only seventy centimes; it weighed 450 grammes, you see, and so that was the postage."
I may add that the manuscript thus sent, and since returned to the poet's son, is written in Browning's neatest and distinctest hand. There are but few corrections or erasures. Of these one has perhaps a special interest, as applying to the last line he ever published. The "Epilogue" he first ended thus:—
This he changed to—
On hearing that the manuscript had safely reached its destination, Browning's kind thoughts at once reverted to the postmaster, good and true, and he went to thank him for his share in the transaction.
Little can have changed at the Rocca since Browning visited it. The stones roll down the narrow path from under your feet, as you ascend through vineyards and orchards, past stray poultry and groups of sleeping ducks. In a few minutes you reach the crest of the hill, and find the old strong-hold, turret-flanked and loopholed, that had forgenerations frowned upon the valley below, as was the way of citadels in the bad old times. Now it is all smiles, garland-wreathed and happy in its green old age.
During his stay in Asolo Browning and his sister spent much time in the house of Mrs. Bronson, the Mrs. Arthur Bronson to whom the poet dedicated his last book of verses, and whom he thanked in his preface for "yet another experience of the gracious hospitality bestowed on me for so many years." In the afternoon they would all take long drives together.
It was on one of these occasions that Browning hit upon the title he would give his volume of poems. His son suggesting that it should in some way be connected with the name of Asolo, he bethought himself of the verbasolare. "Have you a good dictionary?" he asked his hostess. "I feel sure it was Cardinal Bembo who used the word, but I must look it up." He did, the well-known result being the adoption of the title and the explanation given in the introductory lines.
At Mrs. Bronson's it was quite understood that he should come and go as he liked, and that he should consider "La Mura" as much his home as he would his own house. A spacious loggia had recently been added to the old building, virtually forming a new room, roofed in, but open to the air on three sides. Here Browning spent many hours walking up and down or reading, or he would sit in the arm-chair and "drink in the air," as he used to say.
From that point of vantage he would watch Nature's ever-varying moods, and muse over the historical recollections evoked by Caterina Cornaro's palace and the other old buildings on the hills opposite. Often he would hurry back to the house, anxious lest he should miss the sunset as viewed from that loggia.
A constant source of enjoyment to him was an old spinet, marked and dated, "Ferdinando Ferrari, Ravenna, 1522." Knowing how much pleasure this little instrument had given him during former stays at her house in Venice, his hostess had had it brought to Asolo, and, here as there, he delighted in playing upon it of an evening, simple, restful melodies that had been familiar to him for years, or quaint scraps of early German or Italian music.
From the spinet he would go to the books. "What have you got?" he asked on the first evening of his stay. "What shall I read to you? Shakespeare? What! You don't mean to say you haven't brought your Shakespeare! I am shocked."
On this, as on other occasions, he was always most deprecatory when asked to read something of his own. But the new edition of his works which he had presented to his friend, being at hand, he would take down a volume and relate, in his own words, and with his unaffected intonation, the story of a Paracelsus or a Strafford. And that would afterwards lead him to speak with ever fresh enthusiasm of the historical associations connected with such names. In the course of the exhaustive studies that always preceded the composition of any work of his,he made himself intimately acquainted with every fact concerning the lives of those whom he was about to pourtray. Whatever detail history had preserved he made his own, and what his mind had once assimilated, his memory ever retained.
The pilgrim to Asolo would naturally look about for some clue to the poems written there. He would hope to meet with some of the models, animate or inanimate, that might have suggested one or the other of the "Facts and Fancies." But, reticent as Browning always was concerning his work, even with those nearest to him, he has left no trace to guide us.
It was quite exceptional when, one day returning from a drive, he said, "I've composed a poem since we've been out; it is all in my head, and when I get home I will write it down."
"What is it about?" very naturally asked his companions.
"No, no, no; that I won't say. You know I never can speak of what I am writing."
"Ah, but now you have told us so much, you must tell us all," pleaded Mrs. Bronson; and as she resolutely declared she would not take No for an answer, he gave way, and said—
"Very well then, I will tell you. It is all about the ladies wearing birds in their hats. I've put it pretty strong, and I don't know how they'll take it."
The proof-sheets of his book of poems he had given to Mrs. Bronson. "Did you understand them all?" he asked. "Did you understand the flutemusic? Ah, not quite. Well, some day I'll tell you all about it." But the day never came! He little knew that he was postponing it for ever; on the contrary, he was planning pleasant things for the future.
"If I were only ten years younger," he said, "I should like to have a place here in Asolo. Now the Asilo Infantile; if I could get that, I would complete it and call it Pippa's tower. It is more for Pen. I may not enjoy it long; but after all, I do think I am good for another ten years."
The Asilo Infantile he spoke of was a large unfinished building, originally intended to do service as a schoolhouse. It stood opposite the loggia on the ridge of the hills that push forward into the valley.
Pippa and her sister-weavers were often uppermost in the poet's mind, and he would tell how formerly the girls used to sit at their work in the doorways all along theSotto-porticiand weave cheerful songs into their web. Now the trade had gone to Cornuda and elsewhere. He had visions of what he would like to do for the poor girls thus dispossessed, should he come to live among them—visions that were in a great measure to be realised by those who bear his name, and who have inherited his world-wide sympathies.
Negotiations were opened with the Town Council with the view of acquiring the building and grounds to be dedicated to Pippa. It was the first time that municipal property was to be sold, so the matter had carefully to be considered by those in authority.The negotiations took their due course; but alas! they came to a close too late. The intending tenant was never to obtain possession.
The day and hour that a favourable decision was arrived at, was also the day and hour of the poet's death.
THE END
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