* An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in companywith 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!! Icriedwhen 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,Ithink, 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 NewCastle.
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.
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, youaredetermined 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 toat 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—Ihavehad 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 monumentdesigned 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 whichshewould have writhed under—if it everwerenecessary, why,Ishould 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 shoulddoit 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—butIopen 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.
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 Ididtake,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—butthreeseem 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 bemyFlorence 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,—andhesaid, 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.