LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING

by Mrs. Sutherland Orr

Second Edition

Preface

Such letters of Mr. Browning's as appear, whole or in part, in thepresent volume have been in most cases given to me by the persons towhom they were addressed, or copied by Miss Browning from the originalsunder her care; but I owe to the daughter of the Rev. W. J. Fox--Mrs. Bridell Fox--those written to her father and to Miss Flower; the twointeresting extracts from her father's correspondence with herself andMr. Browning's note to Mr. Robertson. 

For my general material I have been largely indebted to Miss Browning. Her memory was the only existing record of her brother's boyhood andyouth. It has been to me an unfailing as well as always accessibleauthority for that subsequent period of his life which I could only knowin disconnected facts or his own fragmentary reminiscences. It is lesstrue, indeed, to say that she has greatly helped me in writing thisshort biography than that without her help it could never have beenundertaken. 

I thank my friends Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell and Miss Hickey for theirinvaluable assistance in preparing the book for, and carrying it throughthe press; and I acknowledge with real gratitude the advantages derivedby it from Mr. Dykes Campbell's large literary experience in his verycareful final revision of the proofs. 

A. Orr. April 22, 1891. 

Contents

Chapter 1 Origin of the Browning Family--Robert Browning'sGrandfather--His position and Character--His first and secondMarriage--Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning'sFather--Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning'sGrandmother--Existing Evidence against it--The Grandmother's Portrait. 

Chapter 2 Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparisonbetween him and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of hisHabits and Character--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letterof Mr. Locker--Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character andAntecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy imparted toboth her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son. 

Chapter 3 1812-1826 Birth of Robert Browning--His Childhoodand Schooldays--Restless Temperament--Brilliant MentalEndowments--Incidental Peculiarities--Strong ReligiousFeeling--Passionate Attachment to his Mother; Grief at firstSeparation--Fondness for Animals--Experiences of School Life--ExtensiveReading--Early Attempts in Verse--Letter from his Father concerningthem--Spurious Poems in Circulation--'Incondita'--Mr. Fox--Miss Flower. 

Chapter 4 1826-1833 First Impressions of Keats and Shelley--ProlongedInfluence of Shelley--Details of Home Education--Its Effects--YouthfulRestlessness--Counteracting Love of Home--Early Friendships: AlfredDomett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes--Choice of Poetry as aProfession--Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerningthem--Interest in Art--Love of good Theatrical Performances--Talent forActing--Final Preparation for Literary Life. 

Chapter 5 1833-1835 'Pauline'--Letters to Mr. Fox--Publication of thePoem; chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics--Mr. Fox's Reviewin the 'Monthly Repository'; other Notices--Russian Journey--Desireddiplomatic Appointment--Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode ofAppearance--'The Trifler'--M. De Ripert-Monclar--'Paracelsus'--Lettersto Mr. Fox concerning it; its Publication--Incidental Origin of'Paracelsus'; its inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'--Mr. Fox'sReview of it in the 'Monthly Repository'--Article in the 'Examiner' byJohn Forster. 

Chapter 6 1835-1838 Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars--RenewedIntercourse with the second Family of Robert Browning'sGrandfather--Reuben Browning--William Shergold Browning--Visitorsat Hatcham--Thomas Carlyle--Social Life--New Friends andAcquaintance--Introduction to Macready--New Year's Eve at ElmPlace--Introduction to John Forster--Miss Fanny Haworth--MissMartineau--Serjeant Talfourd--The 'Ion' Supper--'Strafford'--Relationswith Macready--Performance of 'Strafford'--Letters concerning itfrom Mr. Browning and Miss Flower--Personal Glimpses of RobertBrowning--Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration--Relation of 'Strafford'to 'Sordello'--Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'. 

Chapter 7 1838-1841 First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr. John Kenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bellsand Pomegranates'. 

Chapter 8 1841-1844 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'--Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady Martin--Charles Dickens--Other Dramas and MinorPoems--Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower--Second ItalianJourney; Naples--E. J. Trelawney--Stendhal. 

Chapter 9 1844-1849 Introduction to Miss Barrett--Engagement--Motivesfor Secrecy--Marriage--Journey to Italy--Extract of Letter fromMr. Fox--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford--Life atPisa--Vallombrosa--Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle--Proposed BritishMission to the Vatican--Father Prout--Palazzo Guidi--Fano; Ancona--'ABlot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. 

Chapter 10 1849-1852 Death of Mr. Browning's Mother--Birth of hisSon--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Baths of Lucca--Florenceagain--Venice--Margaret Fuller Ossoli--Visit to England--Winter inParis--Carlyle--George Sand--Alfred de Musset. 

Chapter 11 1852-1855 M. Joseph Milsand--His close Friendship withMr. Browning; Mrs. Browning's Impression of him--New Edition ofMr. Browning's Poems--'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'--'Essay' onShelley--Summer in London--Dante Gabriel Rossetti--Florence; secludedLife--Letters from Mr. And Mrs. Browning--'Colombe's Birthday'--Baths ofLucca--Mrs. Browning's Letters--Winter in Rome--Mr. And Mrs. Story--Mrs. Sartoris--Mrs. Fanny Kemble--Summer in London--Tennyson--Ruskin. 

Chapter 12 1855-1858 'Men and Women'--'Karshook'--'Two in theCampagna'--Winter in Paris; Lady Elgin--'Aurora Leigh'--Death ofMr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett--Penini--Mrs. Browning's Letters to MissBrowning--The Florentine Carnival--Baths of Lucca--Spiritualism--Mr. Kirkup; Count Ginnasi--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox--Havre. 

Chapter 13 1858-1861 Mrs. Browning's Illness--Siena--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Leighton--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--WalterSavage Landor--Winter in Rome--Mr. Val Prinsep--Friends in Rome: Mr. AndMrs. Cartwright--Multiplying Social Relations--Massimo d'Azeglio--Sienaagain--Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister--Mr. Browning'sOccupations--Madame du Quaire--Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death. 

Chapter 14 1861-1863 Miss Blagden--Letters from Mr. Browning toMiss Haworth and Mr. Leighton--His Feeling in regard to FuneralCeremonies--Establishment in London--Plan of Life--Letter to Madamedu Quaire--Miss Arabel Barrett--Biarritz--Letters to MissBlagden--Conception of 'The Ring and the Book'--BiographicalIndiscretion--New Edition of his Works--Mr. And Mrs. Procter. 

Chapter 15 1863-1869 Pornic--'James Lee's Wife'--Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's--Letters to Miss Blagden--His own Estimate of his Work--HisFather's Illness and Death; Miss Browning--Le Croisic--AcademicHonours; Letter to the Master of Balliol--Death of MissBarrett--Audierne--Uniform Edition of his Works--His risingFame--'Dramatis Personae'--'The Ring and the Book'; Character ofPompilia. 

Chapter 16 1869-1873 Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower--Scotland; Visit toLady Ashburton--Letters to Miss Blagden--St. -Aubin; The Franco-PrussianWar--'Herve Riel'--Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith--'Balaustion's Adventure';'Prince Hohenstiel--Schwangau'--'Fifine at the Fair'--Mistaken Theoriesof Mr. Browning's Work--St. -Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. 

Chapter 17 1873-1878 London Life--Love of Music--MissEgerton-Smith--Periodical Nervous Exhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes'Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'The Inn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and otherPoems'--Visits to Oxford and Cambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St. Andrews; Letter from Professor Knight--In the SavoyardMountains--Death of Miss Egerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets ofCroisic'--Selections from his Works. 

Chapter 18 1878-1884 He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--Venice--Favourite Alpine Retreats--Mrs. ArthurBronson--Life in Venice--A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre--Mr. Cholmondeley--Mr. Browning's Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letterto Mrs. Charles Skirrow--'Dramatic Idyls'--'Jocoseria'--'Ferishtah'sFancies'. 

Chapter 19 1881-1887 The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey--His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter--Letter to Miss Hickey;'Strafford'--Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies--Letters to ProfessorKnight--Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni--The GoldoniSonnet--Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni--Letters to Mrs. CharlesSkirrow--Mrs. Bloomfield Moore--Llangollen; Sir Theodore and LadyMartin--Loss of old Friends--Foreign Correspondent of the RoyalAcademy--'Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day'. 

Chapter 20 Constancy to Habit--Optimism--Belief in Providence--PoliticalOpinions--His Friendships--Reverence for Genius--Attitude towardshis Public--Attitude towards his Work--Habits of Work--HisReading--Conversational Powers--Impulsiveness and Reserve--NervousPeculiarities--His Benevolence--His Attitude towards Women. 

Chapter 21 1887-1889 Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning--Removal to DeVere Gardens--Symptoms of failing Strength--New Poems; New Editionof his Works--Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and LadyMartin--Primiero and Venice--Letters to Miss Keep--The last Year inLondon--Asolo--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. 

Chapter 22 1889 Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo--Venice--Letterto Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett--Lines in the 'Athenaeum'--Letter to MissKeep--Illness--Death--Funeral Ceremonial at Venice--Publication of'Asolando'--Interment in Poets' Corner. 

Conclusion

Index

Portrait of Robert Browning (1889) Mr. Browning's Study in De VereGardens

LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING

Chapter 1

Origin of the Browning Family--Robert Browning's Grandfather--Hisposition and Character--His first and second Marriage--Unkindnesstowards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father--Alleged Infusionof West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother--ExistingEvidence against it--The Grandmother's Portrait. 

A belief was current in Mr. Browning's lifetime that he had Jewish bloodin his veins. It received outward support from certain accidents of hislife, from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature, from his friendship for various members of the Jewish community inLondon. It might well have yielded to the fact of his never claiming thekinship, which could not have existed without his knowledge, and which, if he had known it, he would, by reason of these very sympathies, havebeen the last person to disavow. The results of more recent and moresystematic inquiry have shown the belief to be unfounded. 

Our poet sprang, on the father's side, from an obscure or, as familytradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock settled, at an early period of our history, in the south, and probably alsosouth-west, of England. A line of Brownings owned the manors ofMelbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond, in north-west Dorsetshire; theirlast representative disappeared--or was believed to do so--in the timeof Henry VII. , their manors passing into the hands of the Earls ofIlchester, who still hold them. * The name occurs after 1542 in differentparts of the country: in two cases with the affix of 'esquire', in twoalso, though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge, where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear. Its cradle, as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge, on theWiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors, of the thirdand fourth generations, held, as we understand, a modest but independentsocial position. 

 * I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles, to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall. 

This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better with ourimpression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree which morepalpably connected him with the 'knightly' and 'squirely' families whosename he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national lifeto which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of thatgenius and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense, the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements whichentered into its growth were racial as well as cultural, and inheritedas well as absorbed, the evidence of its strong natural or physicalbasis remains undisturbed. 

Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in thematter. He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogicalpast which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members ofhis family. He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to himfrom his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to doso, a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle, inyears gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason to thinkabout his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason to careabout them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case, the mostimportant fact in his family history. 

 Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi, Suis le seigneur de Conti, he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally questionedhim about it. 

Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning'sgrandfather, also a Robert Browning, who obtained through LordShaftesbury's influence a clerkship in the Bank of England, and enteredon it when barely twenty, in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose tothe position of Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an importantone, and which brought him into contact with the leading financiersof the day. He became also a lieutenant in the Honourable ArtilleryCompany, and took part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riotsof 1789. He was an able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman, verymuch of the provincial type; his literary tastes being limited to theBible and 'Tom Jones', both of which he is said to have read throughonce a year. He possessed a handsome person and, probably, a vigorousconstitution, since he lived to the age of eighty-four, thoughfrequently tormented by gout; a circumstance which may help to accountfor his not having seen much of his grandchildren, the poet and hissister; we are indeed told that he particularly dreaded the lively boy'svicinity to his afflicted foot. He married, in 1778, Margaret, daughterof a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with Miss Seymour; and who was bornin the West Indies and had inherited property there. They had threechildren: Robert, the poet's father; a daughter, who lived an uneventfullife and plays no part in the family history; and another son who diedan infant. The Creole mother died also when her eldest boy was onlyseven years old, and passed out of his memory in all but an indistinctimpression of having seen her lying in her coffin. Five years later thewidower married a Miss Smith, who gave him a large family. 

This second marriage of Mr. Browning's was a critical event in the lifeof his eldest son; it gave him, to all appearance, two step-parentsinstead of one. There could have been little sympathy between his fatherand himself, for no two persons were ever more unlike, but there was yetanother cause for the systematic unkindness under which the lad grewup. Mr. Browning fell, as a hard man easily does, greatly under theinfluence of his second wife, and this influence was made by herto subserve the interests of a more than natural jealousy of herpredecessor. An early instance of this was her banishing the dead lady'sportrait to a garret, on the plea that her husband did not need twowives. The son could be no burden upon her because he had a littleincome, derived from his mother's brother; but this, probably, onlyheightened her ill-will towards him. When he was old enough to go to aUniversity, and very desirous of going--when, moreover, he offered todo so at his own cost--she induced his father to forbid it, because, she urged, they could not afford to send their other sons to college. Anearlier ambition of his had been to become an artist; but when he showedhis first completed picture to his father, the latter turned away andrefused to look at it. He gave himself the finishing stroke in theparental eyes, by throwing up a lucrative employment which he had heldfor a short time on his mother's West Indian property, in disgust at thesystem of slave labour which was still in force there; and he paid forthis unpractical conduct as soon as he was of age, by the compulsoryreimbursement of all the expenses which his father, up to that date, hadincurred for him; and by the loss of his mother's fortune, which, at thetime of her marriage, had not been settled upon her. It was probablyin despair of doing anything better, that, soon after this, in histwenty-second year, he also became a clerk in the Bank of England. Hemarried and settled in Camberwell, in 1811; his son and daughter wereborn, respectively, in 1812 and 1814. He became a widower in 1849; andwhen, four years later, he had completed his term of service at theBank, he went with his daughter to Paris, where they resided until hisdeath in 1866. 

Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a conviction, that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole in the strictsense of the term, that of a person born of white parents in the WestIndies, and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood passed from her toher son and grandson. Such an occurrence was, on the face of it, notimpossible, and would be absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I thinkI may add, to that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and hisfather were what we know them, and if negro blood had any part in theircomposition, it was no worse for them, and so much the better for thenegro. But many persons among us are very averse to the idea of sucha cross; I believe its assertion, in the present case, to be entirelymistaken; I prefer, therefore, touching on the facts alleged in favourof it, to passing them over in a silence which might be taken to meanindifference, but might also be interpreted into assent. 

We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life, that a nephewwho saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian. He neitherhad nor could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England at thetime specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior was residing onhis mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, his appearance was heldto justify his being placed in church among the coloured members of thecongregation. We are assured in the strongest terms that the story hasno foundation, and this by a gentleman whose authority in all mattersconcerning the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise acceptedas conclusive. If the anecdote were true it would be a singularcircumstance that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing negroheads, and thus obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association withthem. 

I do not know the exact physical indications by which a dark strain isperceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes, hair, and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons who inthe present case are supposed to have borne them. The poet's father hadlight blue eyes and, I am assured by those who knew him best, a clear, ruddy complexion. His appearance induced strangers passing him in theParis streets to remark, 'C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whitenessof Miss Browning's skin was modified in her brother by a sallow tingesufficiently explained by frequent disturbance of the liver; but itnever affected the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair, which grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black, is spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth, as golden. It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his earlyfriend Mr. Fox, who grew up in the little social circle to which hebelonged, never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him; and alady who made his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year, wrote asonnet upon him, beginning with these words:

 Thy brow is calm, young Poet--pale and clear As a moonlighted statue. 

The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve, however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on themain lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities concerningit. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merelycontracted form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized inVenice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; and, by astrange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace now ownedby Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. The present ContessaWidman has lately restored her own palace, which was falling into ruin. 

That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrageto her husband's second wife, has hung for many years in her grandson'sdining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It represents astately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the face or hairbetrays any indication of possible dark blood, it is imperceptible tothe general observer, and must be of too slight and fugitive a natureto enter into the discussion. A long curl touches one shoulder. Onehand rests upon a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which was held to bethe proper study and recreation of cultivated women in those days. Thepicture was painted by Wright of Derby. 

A brother of this lady was an adventurous traveller, and was said tohave penetrated farther into the interior of Africa than any otherEuropean of his time. His violent death will be found recorded in asingular experience of the poet's middle life. 

Chapter 2

Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparison betweenhim and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of his Habits andCharacter--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letter ofMr. Locker-Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character andAntecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy imparted toboth her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son. 

It was almost a matter of course that Robert Browning's father should bedisinclined for bank work. We are told, and can easily imagine, that hewas not so good an official as the grandfather; we know that he did notrise so high, nor draw so large a salary. But he made the best ofhis position for his family's sake, and it was at that time both moreimportant and more lucrative than such appointments have since become. Its emoluments could be increased by many honourable means not coveredby the regular salary. The working-day was short, and every additionalhour's service well paid. To be enrolled on the night-watch was alsovery remunerative; there were enormous perquisites in pens, paper, andsealing-wax. * Mr. Browning availed himself of these opportunities ofadding to his income, and was thus enabled, with the help of his privatemeans, to gratify his scholarly and artistic tastes, and give hischildren the benefit of a very liberal education--the one distinct idealof success in life which such a nature as his could form. Constituted ashe was, he probably suffered very little through the paternal unkindnesswhich had forced him into an uncongenial career. Its only palpableresult was to make him a more anxiously indulgent parent when his owntime came. 

 * I have been told that, far from becoming careless in the use of these things from his practically unbounded command of them, he developed for them an almost superstitious reverence. He could never endure to see a scrap of writing- paper wasted. 

Many circumstances conspired to secure to the coming poet a happierchildhood and youth than his father had had. His path was to be smoothednot only by natural affection and conscientious care, but by literaryand artistic sympathy. The second Mr. Browning differed, in certainrespects, as much from the third as from the first. There were, nevertheless, strong points in which, if he did not resemble, he atleast distinctly foreshadowed him; and the genius of the one would lacksome possible explanation if we did not recognize in great measure itsorganized material in the other. Much, indeed, that was genius in theson existed as talent in the father. The moral nature of the youngerman diverged from that of the older, though retaining strong points ofsimilarity; but the mental equipments of the two differed far lessin themselves than in the different uses to which temperament andcircumstances trained them. 

The most salient intellectual characteristic of Mr. Browning senior washis passion for reading. In his daughter's words, 'he read in season, and out of season;' and he not only read, but remembered. As aschoolboy, he knew by heart the first book of the 'Iliad', and allthe odes of Horace; and it shows how deeply the classical part of histraining must have entered into him, that he was wont, in later life, tosoothe his little boy to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. Itwas one of his amusements at school to organize Homeric combats amongthe boys, in which the fighting was carried on in the manner of theGreeks and Trojans, and he and his friend Kenyon would arm themselveswith swords and shields, and hack at each other lustily, excitingthemselves to battle by insulting speeches derived from the Homerictext. *

 * This anecdote is partly quoted from Mrs. Andrew Crosse, who has introduced it into her article 'John Kenyon and his Friends', 'Temple Bar', April 1890. She herself received it from Mr. Dykes Campbell. 

Mr. Browning had also an extraordinary power of versifying, and taughthis son from babyhood the words he wished him to remember, by joiningthem to a grotesque rhyme; the child learned all his Latin declensionsin this way. His love of art had been proved by his desire to adopt itas a profession; his talent for it was evidenced by the life and powerof the sketches, often caricatures, which fell from his pen or pencil aseasily as written words. Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a veryearly elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes(now in the possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) throughwhich his grandfather impressed upon him the names and position of theprincipal bones of the human body. 

Even more remarkable than his delight in reading was the manner inwhich Mr. Browning read. He carried into it all the preciseness of thescholar. It was his habit when he bought a book--which was generallyan old one allowing of this addition--to have some pages of blank paperbound into it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, or suchother supplementary matter as would enhance the interest, or assist themastering, of its contents; all written in a clear and firm though byno means formal handwriting. More than one book thus treated by himhas passed through my hands, leaving in me, it need hardly be said, a stronger impression of the owner's intellectual quality than theacquisition by him of the finest library could have conveyed. One of theexperiences which disgusted him with St. Kitt's was the frustrationby its authorities of an attempt he was making to teach a negro boyto read, and the understanding that all such educative action wasprohibited. 

In his faculties and attainments, as in his pleasures and appreciations, he showed the simplicity and genuineness of a child. He was not onlyready to amuse, he could always identify himself with children, hislove for whom never failed him in even his latest years. His more thanchildlike indifference to pecuniary advantages had been shown in earlylife. He gave another proof of it after his wife's death, when hedeclined a proposal, made to him by the Bank of England, to assist infounding one of its branch establishments in Liverpool. He never indeed, personally, cared for money, except as a means of acquiring old, i. E. Rare books, for which he had, as an acquaintance declared, the scentof a hound and the snap of a bulldog. His eagerness to possess suchtreasures was only matched by the generosity with which he parted withthem; and his daughter well remembers the feeling of angry suspicionwith which she and her brother noted the periodical arrival of a certainvisitor who would be closeted with their father for hours, and stealaway before the supper time, when the family would meet, with someprecious parcel of books or prints under his arm. 

It is almost superfluous to say that he was indifferent to creaturecomforts. Miss Browning was convinced that, if on any occasion she hadsaid to him, 'There will be no dinner to-day, ' he would only havelooked up from his book to reply, 'All right, my dear, it is of noconsequence. ' In his bank-clerk days, when he sometimes dined in Town, he left one restaurant with which he was not otherwise dissatisfied, because the waiter always gave him the trouble of specifying what hewould have to eat. A hundred times that trouble would not have deterredhim from a kindly act. Of his goodness of heart, indeed, many distinctinstances might be given; but even this scanty outline of his life hasrendered them superfluous. 

Mr. Browning enjoyed splendid physical health. His early love of readinghad not precluded a wholesome enjoyment of athletic sports; and he was, as a boy, the fastest runner and best base-ball player in his school. Hedied, like his father, at eighty-four (or rather, within a few days ofeighty-five), but, unlike him, he had never been ill; a French friendexclaimed when all was over, 'Il n'a jamais ete vieux. ' His facultieswere so unclouded up to the last moment that he could watch himselfdying, and speculate on the nature of the change which was befallinghim. 'What do you think death is, Robert?' he said to his son; 'is ita fainting, or is it a pang?' A notice of his decease appeared in anAmerican newspaper. It was written by an unknown hand, and bears a stampof genuineness which renders the greater part of it worth quoting. 

'He was not only a ruddy, active man, with fine hair, that retained itsstrength and brownness to the last, but he had a courageous spirit and aremarkably intelligent mind. He was a man of the finest culture, and wasoften, and never vainly, consulted by his son Robert concerning the morerecondite facts relating to the old characters, whose bones that poetliked so well to disturb. His knowledge of old French, Spanish, andItalian literature was wonderful. The old man went smiling and peacefulto his long rest, preserving his faculties to the last, insomuch thatthe physician, astonished at his continued calmness and good humour, turned to his daughter, and said in a low voice, "Does this gentlemanknow that he is dying?" The daughter said in a voice which the fathercould hear, "He knows it;" and the old man said with a quiet smile, "Death is no enemy in my eyes. " His last words were spoken to his sonRobert, who was fanning him, "I fear I am wearying you, dear. "'

Four years later one of his English acquaintances in Paris, Mr. Frederick Locker, now Mr. Locker-Lampson, wrote to Robert Browning asfollows:

Dec. 26, 1870. 

My dear Browning, --I have always thought that you or Miss Browning, orsome other capable person, should draw up a sketch of your excellentfather so that, hereafter, it might be known what an interesting man hewas. 

I used often to meet you in Paris, at Lady Elgin's. She had a genuinetaste for poetry, and she liked being read to, and I remember you gaveher a copy of Keats' poems, and you used often to read his poetry toher. Lady Elgin died in 1860, and I think it was in that year that LadyCharlotte and I saw the most of Mr. Browning. * He was then quite anelderly man, if years could make him so, but he had so much vivacity ofmanner, and such simplicity and freshness of mind, that it was difficultto think him old. 

 * Mr. Locker was then married to Lady Charlotte Bruce, Lady Elgin's daughter. 

I remember, he and your sister lived in an apartment in the Rue deGrenelle, St. Germain, in quite a simple fashion, much in the way thatmost people live in Paris, and in the way that all sensible people wouldwish to live all over the world. 

Your father and I had at least one taste and affection in common. Heliked hunting the old bookstalls on the 'quais', and he had a greatlove and admiration for Hogarth; and he possessed several of Hogarth'sengravings, some in rare and early states of the plate; and he wouldrelate with glee the circumstances under which he had picked them up, and at so small a price too! However, he had none of the 'petit-maitre'weakness of the ordinary collector, which is so common, and which I ownto!--such as an infatuation for tall copies, and wide margins. 

I remember your father was fond of drawing in a rough and ready fashion;he had plenty of talent, I should think not very great cultivation; butquite enough to serve his purpose, and to amuse his friends. He had athoroughly lively and _healthy_ interest in your poetry, and he showed mesome of your boyish attempts at versification. 

Taking your dear father altogether, I quite believe him to have been oneof those men--interesting men--whom the world never hears of. Perhaps hewas shy--at any rate he was much less known than he ought to have been;and now, perhaps, he only remains in the recollection of his family, and of one or two superior people (like myself!) who were capable ofappreciating him. My dear Browning, I really hope you will draw up aslight sketch of your father before it is too late. Yours, FrederickLocker. 

The judgments thus expressed twenty years ago are cordially re-statedin the letter in which Mr. Locker-Lampson authorizes me to publish them. The desired memoir was never written; but the few details which I havegiven of the older Mr. Browning's life and character may perhaps standfor it. 

With regard to the 'strict dissent' with which her parents have beentaxed, Miss Browning writes to me: 'My father was born and educated inthe Church of England, and, for many years before his death, lived inher communion. He became a Dissenter in middle life, and my mother, bornand brought up in the Kirk of Scotland, became one also; but they couldnot be called bigoted, since we always in the evening attended thepreaching of the Rev. Henry Melvill* (afterwards Canon of St. Paul's), whose sermons Robert much admired. '**

 * At Camden Chapel, Camberwell. 

 ** Mr. Browning was much interested, in later years, in hearing Canon, perhaps then already Archdeacon, Farrar extol his eloquence and ask whether he had known him. Mr. Ruskin also spoke of him with admiration. 

Little need be said about the poet's mother. She was spoken of byCarlyle as 'the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman. ' Mr. Kenyondeclared that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they madeit wherever they were. But her character was all resumed in her son'swords, spoken with the tremulous emotion which so often accompanied hisallusion to those he had loved and lost: 'She was a divine woman. ' Shewas Scotch on the maternal side, and her kindly, gentle, but distinctlyevangelical Christianity must have been derived from that source. Herfather, William Wiedemann, a ship-owner, was a Hamburg German settledin Dundee, and has been described by Mr. Browning as an accomplisheddraughtsman and musician. She herself had nothing of the artist abouther, though we hear of her sometimes playing the piano; in all hergoodness and sweetness she seems to have been somewhat matter-of-fact. But there is abundant indirect evidence of Mr. Browning's love ofmusic having come to him through her, and we are certainly justified inholding the Scottish-German descent as accountable, in great measureat least, for the metaphysical quality so early apparent in the poet'smind, and of which we find no evidence in that of his father. His strongreligious instincts must have been derived from both parents, thoughmost anxiously fostered by his mother. 

There is yet another point on which Mrs. Browning must have influencedthe life and destinies of her son, that of physical health, or, atleast, nervous constitution. She was a delicate woman, very anaemicduring her later years, and a martyr to neuralgia, which was perhaps asymptom of this condition. The acute ailment reproduced itself inher daughter in spite of an otherwise vigorous constitution. With thebrother, the inheritance of suffering was not less surely present, ifmore difficult to trace. We have been accustomed to speaking of him as abrilliantly healthy man; he was healthy, even strong, in many essentialrespects. Until past the age of seventy he could take long walks withoutfatigue, and endure an amount of social and general physical strainwhich would have tried many younger men. He carried on until the last alarge, if not always serious, correspondence, and only within the latestmonths, perhaps weeks of his life, did his letters even suggest thatphysical brain-power was failing him. He had, within the limits whichhis death has assigned to it, a considerable recuperative power. Hisconsciousness of health was vivid, so long as he was well; and it wasonly towards the end that the faith in his probable length of daysoccasionally deserted him. But he died of no acute disease, more thanseven years younger than his father, having long carried with himexternal marks of age from which his father remained exempt. Tilltowards the age of forty he suffered from attacks of sore-throat, notfrequent, but of an angry kind. He was constantly troubled by imperfectaction of the liver, though no doctor pronounced the evil serious. Ihave spoken of this in reference to his complexion. During the lasttwenty years, if not for longer, he rarely spent a winter without asuffocating cold and cough; within the last five, asthmatic symptomsestablished themselves; and when he sank under what was perhaps hisfirst real attack of bronchitis it was not because the attack was verysevere, but because the heart was exhausted. The circumstances of hisdeath recalled that of his mother; and we might carry the sad analogystill farther in his increasing pallor, and the slow and not strongpulse which always characterized him. This would perhaps be a mistake. It is difficult to reconcile any idea of bloodlessness with the boundingvitality of his younger body and mind. Any symptom of organic diseasecould scarcely, in his case, have been overlooked. But so much iscertain: he was conscious of what he called a nervousness of naturewhich neither father nor grandfather could have bequeathed to him. Heimputed to this, or, in other words, to an undue physical sensitivenessto mental causes of irritation, his proneness to deranged liver, andthe asthmatic conditions which he believed, rightly or wrongly, to beproduced by it. He was perhaps mistaken in some of his inferences, buthe was not mistaken in the fact. He had the pleasures as well as thepains of this nervous temperament; its quick response to every congenialstimulus of physical atmosphere, and human contact. It heightened theenjoyment, perhaps exaggerated the consciousness of his physical powers. It also certainly in his later years led him to overdraw them. Manypersons have believed that he could not live without society; aprolonged seclusion from it would, for obvious reasons, have beenunsuited to him. But the excited gaiety which to the last he carriedinto every social gathering was often primarily the result of a moraland physical effort which his temperament prompted, but his strengthcould not always justify. Nature avenged herself in recurrent periods ofexhaustion, long before the closing stage had set in. 

I shall subsequently have occasion to trace this nervous impressibilitythrough various aspects and relations of his life; all I now seek toshow is that this healthiest of poets and most real of men was notcompounded of elements of pure health, and perhaps never could have beenso. It might sound grotesque to say that only a delicate woman couldhave been the mother of Robert Browning. The fact remains that of sucha one, and no other, he was born; and we may imagine, without beingfanciful, that his father's placid intellectual powers required fortheir transmutation into poetic genius just this infusion of a vitalelement not only charged with other racial and individual qualities, butphysically and morally more nearly allied to pain. Perhaps, even for hishappiness as a man, we could not have wished it otherwise. 

Chapter 3

1812-1826

Birth of Robert Browning--His Childhood and Schooldays--RestlessTemperament--Brilliant Mental Endowments--IncidentalPeculiarities--Strong Religious Feeling--Passionate Attachment to hisMother; Grief at first Separation--Fondness for Animals--Experiences ofSchool Life--Extensive Reading--Early Attempts in Verse--Letter from hisFather concerning them--Spurious Poems in Circulation--'Incondita'--Mr. Fox--Miss Flower. 

Robert Browning was born, as has been often repeated, at Camberwell, onMay 7, 1812, soon after a great comet had disappeared from the sky. He was a handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed anunresting activity and a fiery temper. He clamoured for occupation fromthe moment he could speak. His mother could only keep him quiet whenonce he had emerged from infancy by telling him stories--doubtlessBible stories--while holding him on her knee. His energies were ofcourse destructive till they had found their proper outlet; but we donot hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake ofdoing so. His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsomeBrussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; but the motive, whichhe was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: 'A pitty baze[pretty blaze], mamma. ' Imagination soon came to his rescue. It hasoften been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round andround the dining-room table supporting himself by his hands, when he wasstill so small that his head was scarcely above it. He remembered havingentertained his mother in the very first walk he was considered oldenough to take with her, by a fantastic account of his possessions inhouses, &c. , of which the topographical details elicited from her theremark, 'Why, sir, you are quite a geographer. ' And though this kind ofromancing is common enough among intelligent children, it distinguishesitself in this case by the strong impression which the incident had lefton his own mind. It seems to have been a first real flight of dramaticfancy, confusing his identity for the time being. 

The power of inventing did not, however, interfere with his readiness tolearn, and the facility with which he acquired whatever knowledge camein his way had, on one occasion, inconvenient results. A lady of reducedfortunes kept a small elementary school for boys, a stone's-throw fromhis home; and he was sent to it as a day boarder at so tender an agethat his parents, it is supposed, had no object in view but to getrid of his turbulent activity for an hour or two every morning andafternoon. Nevertheless, his proficiency in reading and spelling wassoon so much ahead of that of the biggest boy, that complaints brokeout among the mammas, who were sure there was not fair play. Mrs. ----wasneglecting her other pupils for the sake of 'bringing on MasterBrowning;' and the poor lady found it necessary to discourage MasterBrowning's attendance lest she should lose the remainder of her flock. This, at least, was the story as he himself remembered it. According toMiss Browning his instructress did not yield without a parting shot. She retorted on the discontented parents that, if she could give theirchildren 'Master Browning's intellect', she would have no difficultyin satisfying them. After this came the interlude of home-teaching, inwhich all his elementary knowledge must have been gained. As an olderchild he was placed with two Misses Ready, who prepared boys forentering their brother's (the Rev. Thomas Ready's) school; and in duetime he passed into the latter, where he remained up to the age offourteen. 

He seems in those early days to have had few playmates beyond hissister, two years younger than himself, and whom his irrepressiblespirit must sometimes have frightened or repelled. Nor do we hearanything of childish loves; and though an entry appeared in his diaryone Sunday in about the seventh or eighth year of his age, 'married twowives this morning, ' it only referred to a vague imaginary appropriationof two girls whom he had just seen in church, and whose charm probablylay in their being much bigger than he. He was, however, capable of aself-conscious shyness in the presence of even a little girl; and hissense of certain proprieties was extraordinarily keen. He told a friendthat on one occasion, when the merest child, he had edged his way by thewall from one point of his bedroom to another, because he was not fullyclothed, and his reflection in the glass could otherwise have been seenthrough the partly open door. *

 * Another anecdote, of a very different kind, belongs to an earlier period, and to that category of pure naughtiness which could not fail to be sometimes represented in the conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy', had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy resented Aunt Betsy's manner as an affront; and he determined, after probably repeated provocation, to show her something worse than a 'lover', whatever this might be. So one night he slipped out of bed, exchanged his nightgown for what he considered the appropriate undress of a devil, completed this by a paper tail, and the ugliest face he could make, and rushed into the drawing-room, where the old lady and his mother were drinking tea. He was snatched up and carried away before he had had time to judge the effect of his apparition; but he did not think, looking back upon the circumstances in later life, that Aunt Betsy had deserved quite so ill of her fellow-creatures as he then believed. 

His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion. The earlyBiblical training had had its effect, and he was, to use his own words, 'passionately religious' in those nursery years; but during them andmany succeeding ones, his mother filled his heart. He loved her so much, he has been heard to say, that even as a grown man he could not sitby her otherwise than with an arm round her waist. It is difficult tomeasure the influence which this feeling may have exercised on his laterlife; it led, even now, to a strange and touching little incidentwhich had in it the incipient poet no less than the loving child. Hisattendance at Miss Ready's school only kept him from home from Mondaytill Saturday of every week; but when called upon to confront his firstfive days of banishment he felt sure that he would not survive them. Aleaden cistern belonging to the school had in, or outside it, the raisedimage of a face. He chose the cistern for his place of burial, andconverted the face into his epitaph by passing his hand over and over itto a continuous chant of: 'In memory of unhappy Browning'--the ceremonybeing renewed in his spare moments, till the acute stage of the feelinghad passed away. 

The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted, wasconspicuous in his very earliest days. His urgent demand for 'somethingto do' would constantly include 'something to be caught' for him: 'theywere to catch him an eft;' 'they were to catch him a frog. ' He wouldrefuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frogfrom among the strawberries; and the maternal parasol, hovering abovethe strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of theuncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenileprojects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution towhich was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter's day on a walland immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled, 'Animals found surviving in the depths of a severe winter. ' Nor didcuriosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion forbirds and beasts was the counterpart of his father's love of children, only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturallyappears. His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sisterand him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to deathby an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure thesight of the book; and as he dared not destroy it, he buried it betweenthe stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where itstood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heardthe adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and whoenjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, he--and his sister with him--cried so bitterly that it was foundnecessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrotwas rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefullyin it ever after. 

As a boy, he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home the moreportable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his motherfor immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilfultenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washedand sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The greatintimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in hisworks is readily explained by these facts. 

Mr. Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in theneighbourhood; and both there and under the preparatory training of thatgentleman's sisters, the young Robert was well and kindly cared for. TheMisses Ready especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfareof their pupils. The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by thesinging, and fell naturally into the measure, of Watts's hymns; and Mr. Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs by illustratingwith voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis with which the brush wouldswoop down in the accentuated syllables of the following lines:

 Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand In gardens planted by Thy hand. 

 . . . . . 

 Fools never raise their thoughts so high, Like 'brutes' they live, like _brutes_ they die. 

He even compelled his mother to laugh at it, though it was sorelyagainst her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing of piouslyintended things. * He had become a bigger boy since the episode of thecistern, and had probably in some degree outgrown the intense piety ofhis earlier childhood. This little incident seems to prove it. On thewhole, however, his religious instincts did not need strengthening, though his sense of humour might get the better of them for a moment;and of secular instruction he seems to have received as little from theone set of teachers as from the other. I do not suppose that the mentaltraining at Mr. Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical than thatof most other schools of his own or, indeed, of a much later period; butthe brilliant abilities of Robert Browning inspired him with a certaincontempt for it, as also for the average schoolboy intelligence towhich it was apparently adapted. It must be for this reason that, as hehimself declared, he never gained a prize, although these rewards wereshowered in such profusion that the only difficulty was to avoidthem; and if he did not make friends at school (for this also has beensomewhere observed), ** it can only be explained in the same way. Hewas at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him as morebackward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely to havetaken pains to conceal the impression. It is difficult, at all events, to think of him as unsociable, and his talents certainly had theiramusing side. Miss Browning tells me that he made his schoolfellowsact plays, some of which he had written for them; and he delighted hisfriends, not long ago, by mimicking his own solemn appearance on somebreaking-up or commemorative day, when, according to programme, 'MasterBrowning' ascended a platform in the presence of assembled parents andfriends, and, in best jacket, white gloves, and carefully curled hair, with a circular bow to the company and the then prescribed wavingof alternate arms, delivered a high-flown rhymed address of his owncomposition. 

 * In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always recognized great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in Dr. Watts himself, who had devoted to this comparatively humble work intellectual powers competent to far higher things. 

 ** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards Sir William, Channel was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning went to him; but a friendly acquaintance began, and was afterwards continued, between the two boys; and a closer friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank, was only interrupted by his death. Another school friend or acquaintance recalled himself as such to the poet's memory some ten or twelve years ago. A man who has reached the age at which his boyhood becomes of interest to the world may even have survived many such relations. 

And during the busy idleness of his schooldays, or, at all events, inthe holidays in which he rested from it, he was learning, as perhapsonly those do learn whose real education is derived from home. Hisfather's house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed withbooks; and, she adds, 'it was in this way that Robert became very earlyfamiliar with subjects generally unknown to boys. ' He read omnivorously, though certainly not without guidance. One of the books he best andearliest loved was 'Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed ina seventeenth century edition, and which contains one or two verytentative specimens of his early handwriting. Its quaint, powerful linesand still quainter illustrations combined the marvellous with what hebelieved to be true; and he seemed specially identified with its worldof religious fancies by the fact that the soul in it was always depictedas a child. On its more general grounds his reading was at once largelyliterary and very historical; and it was in this direction that thepaternal influence was most strongly revealed. 'Quarles' Emblemes'was only one of the large collection of old books which Mr. Browningpossessed; and the young Robert learnt to know each favourite author inthe dress as well as the language which carried with it the life of hisperiod. The first edition of 'Robinson Crusoe'; the first edition ofMilton's works, bought for him by his father; a treatise on astrologypublished twenty years after the introduction of printing; the originalpamphlet 'Killing no Murder' (1559), which Carlyle borrowed for his'Life of Cromwell'; an equally early copy of Bernard Mandeville's'Bees'; very ancient Bibles--are some of the instances which occur tome. Among more modern publications, 'Walpole's Letters' were familiar tohim in boyhood, as well as the 'Letters of Junius' and all the works ofVoltaire. 

Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part in the mentalculture superintended by Robert Browning's father: we can indeed imagineno case in which they would not have found their way into the boy'slife. Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him in their due time, though his special delight in the Greek language only developed itselflater. But his loving, lifelong familiarity with the Elizabethan school, and indeed with the whole range of English poetry, seems to point toa more constant study of our national literature. Byron was his chiefmaster in those early poetic days. He never ceased to honour him as theone poet who combined a constructive imagination with the more technicalqualities of his art; and the result of this period of aesthetictraining was a volume of short poems produced, we are told, when he wasonly twelve, in which the Byronic influence was predominant. 

The young author gave his work the title of 'Incondita', which conveyeda certain idea of deprecation. He was, nevertheless, very anxious to seeit in print; and his father and mother, poetry-lovers of the oldschool, also found in it sufficient merit to justify its publication. No publisher, however, could be found; and we can easily believe thathe soon afterwards destroyed the little manuscript, in some mingledreaction of disappointment and disgust. But his mother, meanwhile, hadshown it to an acquaintance of hers, Miss Flower, who herself admiredits contents so much as to make a copy of them for the inspection of herfriend, the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy wastransmitted to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox; and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, athis urgent request, that lady also returned to him a fragment of versecontained in a letter from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much laterthat a friend, who had earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitelyheard of its destruction. The fragment, which doubtless shared the samefate, was, I am told, a direct imitation of Coleridge's 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter'. 

These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible tobelieve them such when we remember that he composed verses long beforehe could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact has recentlyappeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning have found their wayinto the market, and have been bought respectively by Mr. Dykes Campbelland Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them. It was addressedto Mr. Thomas Powell:

Dear Sir, --I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. Theywere written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly a hundredof them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, having agreat aversion to the practice of many biographers in recording everytrifling incident that falls in their way. He has not the slightestsuspicion that any of his very juvenile performances are in existence. I have several of the originals by me. They are all extemporaneousproductions, nor has any one a single alteration. There was one amongstthem 'On Bonaparte'--remarkably beautiful--and had I not seen it inhis own handwriting I never would have believed it to have been theproduction of a child. It is destroyed. Pardon my troubling you withthese specimens, and requesting you never to mention it, as Robertwould be very much hurt. I remain, dear sir, Your obedient servant, R. Browning. Bank: March 11, 1843. 

The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been soldand resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which thewriter alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father'sown impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together withthe occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from thefirst, have been accidental. 

We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning'sgenius without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there canhave been little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seemto have lain in the direction of too great splendour of language and toolittle wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read 'Incondita' and beenstruck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning that he hadfeared these tendencies as his future snare. But the imitative firstnote of a young poet's voice may hold a rapture of inspiration whichhis most original later utterances will never convey. It is the childSordello, singing against the lark. 

Not even the poet's sister ever saw 'Incondita'. It was the only one ofhis finished productions which Miss Browning did not read, or evenhelp him to write out. She was then too young to be taken into hisconfidence. Its writing, however, had one important result. It procuredfor the boy-poet a preliminary introduction to the valuable literarypatron and friend Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies thefirst substantial record of an acquaintance which made a considerableimpression on his personal life. 

The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters, both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a placein the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie, was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams, a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known'Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister. * Theysang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment, their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were, in theirdifferent ways, very attractive; both interesting, not only from theirtalents, but from their attachment to each other, and the delicacy whichshortened their lives. They died of consumption, the elder in 1846, atthe age of forty-three; the younger a year later. They became acquaintedwith Mrs. Browning through a common friend, Miss Sturtevant; and theyoung Robert conceived a warm admiration for Miss Flower's talents, and a boyish love for herself. She was nine years his senior; her ownaffections became probably engaged, and, as time advanced, his feelingseems to have subsided into one of warm and very loyal friendship. Wehear, indeed, of his falling in love, as he was emerging from his teens, with a handsome girl who was on a visit at his father's house. But thefancy died out 'for want of root. ' The admiration, even tenderness, forMiss Flower had so deep a 'root' that he never in latest life mentionedher name with indifference. In a letter to Mr. Dykes Campbell, in 1881, he spoke of her as 'a very remarkable person. ' If, in spite of hisdenials, any woman inspired 'Pauline', it can have been no other thanshe. He began writing to her at twelve or thirteen, probably on theoccasion of her expressed sympathy with his first distinct effort atauthorship; and what he afterwards called 'the few utterly insignificantscraps of letters and verse' which formed his part of the correspondencewere preserved by her as long as she lived. But he recovered anddestroyed them after his return to England, with all the otherreminiscences of those early years. Some notes, however, are extant, dated respectively, 1841, 1842, and 1845, and will be given in their dueplace. 

 * She also wrote a dramatic poem in five acts, entitled 'Vivia Perpetua', referred to by Mrs. Jameson in her 'Sacred and Legendary Art', and by Leigh Hunt, when he spoke of her in 'Blue-Stocking Revels', as 'Mrs. Adams, rare mistress of thought and of tears. '

Mr. Fox was a friend of Miss Flower's father (Benjamin Flower, known aseditor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer'), and, at his death, in 1829, became co-executor to his will, and a kind of guardian to his daughters, then both unmarried, and motherless from their infancy. Eliza'sprincipal work was a collection of hymns and anthems, originallycomposed for Mr. Fox's chapel, where she had assumed the entiremanagement of the choral part of the service. Her abilities were notconfined to music; she possessed, I am told, an instinctive taste andjudgment in literary matters which caused her opinion to be much valuedby literary men. But Mr. Browning's genuine appreciation of her musicalgenius was probably the strongest permanent bond between them. We shallhear of this in his own words. 

Chapter 4

1826-1833

First Impressions of Keats and Shelley--Prolonged Influenceof Shelley--Details of Home Education--Its Effects--YouthfulRestlessness--Counteracting Love of Home--Early Friendships: AlfredDomett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes--Choice of Poetry as aProfession--Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerningthem--Interest in Art--Love of good Theatrical Performances--Talent forActing--Final Preparation for Literary Life. 

At the period at which we have arrived, which is that of his leavingschool and completing his fourteenth year, another and a significantinfluence was dawning on Robert Browning's life--the influence of thepoet Shelley. Mr. Sharp writes, * and I could only state the factsin similar words, 'Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a boxof second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley'sAtheistical Poem: very scarce. "' . . . 'From vague remarks in reply tohis inquiries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned thatthere really was a poet called Shelley; that he had written severalvolumes; that he was dead. ' . . . 'He begged his mother to procure himShelley's works, a request not easily complied with, for the excellentreason that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of thepoet's name. Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what shesought was procurable at the Olliers', in Vere Street, London. '

 * 'Life of Browning', pp. 30, 31. 

Mrs. Browning went to Messrs. Ollier, and brought back 'most ofShelley's writings, all in their first edition, with the exception of"The Cenci". ' She brought also three volumes of the still less knownJohn Keats, on being assured that one who liked Shelley's works wouldlike these also. 

Keats and Shelley must always remain connected in this epoch ofMr. Browning's poetic growth. They indeed came to him as the twonightingales which, he told some friends, sang together in the May-nightwhich closed this eventful day: one in the laburnum in his father'sgarden, the other in a copper beech which stood on adjoiningground--with the difference indeed, that he must often have listenedto the feathered singers before, while the two new human voices soundedfrom what were to him, as to so many later hearers, unknown heights anddepths of the imaginative world. Their utterance was, to such a spiritas his, the last, as in a certain sense the first, word of whatpoetry can say; and no one who has ever heard him read the 'Ode to aNightingale', and repeat in the same subdued tones, as if continuinghis own thoughts, some line from 'Epipsychidion', can doubt that theyretained a lasting and almost equal place in his poet's heart. But thetwo cannot be regarded as equals in their relation to his life, and itwould be a great mistake to impute to either any important influenceupon his genius. We may catch some fleeting echoes of Keats's melodyin 'Pippa Passes'; it is almost a commonplace that some measureof Shelleyan fancy is recognizable in 'Pauline'. But the poeticindividuality of Robert Browning was stronger than any circumstancethrough which it could be fed. It would have found nourishment in desertair. With his first accepted work he threw off what was foreign tohis poetic nature, to be thenceforward his own never-to-be-subdued andnever-to-be-mistaken self. If Shelley became, and long remained for him, the greatest poet of his age--of almost any age--it was not because heheld him greatest in the poetic art, but because in his case, beyondall others, he believed its exercise to have been prompted by the truestspiritual inspiration. 

It is difficult to trace the process by which this conviction formeditself in the boy's mind; still more to account for the strong personaltenderness which accompanied it. The facts can have been scarcely knownwhich were to present Shelley to his imagination as a maligned andpersecuted man. It is hard to judge how far such human qualities as wenow read into his work, could be apparent to one who only approached himthrough it. But the extra-human note in Shelley's genius irresistiblysuggested to the Browning of fourteen, as it still did to the Browningof forty, the presence of a lofty spirit, one dwelling in the communionof higher things. There was often a deep sadness in his utterance; theconsecration of an early death was upon him. And so the worship rooteditself and grew. It was to find its lyrical expression in 'Pauline'; itsrational and, from the writer's point of view, philosophic justificationin the prose essay on Shelley, published eighteen years afterwards. 

It may appear inconsistent with the nature of this influence thatit began by appealing to him in a subversive form. The Shelley whomBrowning first loved was the Shelley of 'Queen Mab', the Shelley whowould have remodelled the whole system of religious belief, as of humanduty and rights; and the earliest result of the new development wasthat he became a professing atheist, and, for two years, a practisingvegetarian. He returned to his natural diet when he found his eyesightbecoming weak. The atheism cured itself; we do not exactly know when orhow. What we do know is, that it was with him a passing state of moralor imaginative rebellion, and not one of rational doubt. His mind wasnot so constituted that such doubt could fasten itself upon it; nordid he ever in after-life speak of this period of negation except asan access of boyish folly, with which his maturer self could have noconcern. The return to religious belief did not shake his faith in hisnew prophet. It only made him willing to admit that he had misread him. 

This Shelley period of Robert Browning's life--that which intervenedbetween 'Incondita' and 'Pauline'--remained, nevertheless, one ofrebellion and unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributedbesides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided that he wasto complete, or at all events continue, his education at home; and, knowing the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt that the bestreasons, of kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding. It was nonethe less, probably, a mistake, for the time being. The conditions ofhome life were the more favourable for the young poet's imaginativegrowth; but there can rarely have been a boy whose moral and mentalhealth had more to gain by the combined discipline and freedom of apublic school. His home training was made to include everything whichin those days went to the production of an accomplished gentleman, anda great deal therefore that was physically good. He learned music, singing, dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing, and excelled in themore active of these pursuits. The study of music was also serious, andcarried on under two masters. Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable workon counterpoint, was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupilof Moscheles, in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himselfsang; among them Donne's 'Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's 'I willnot have the mad Clytie'; Peacock's 'The mountain sheep are sweeter';and his settings, all of which he subsequently destroyed, were, I amtold, very spirited. His education seems otherwise to have been purelyliterary. For two years, from the age of fourteen to that of sixteen, he studied with a French tutor, who, whether this was intended or not, imparted to him very little but a good knowledge of the French languageand literature. In his eighteenth year he attended, for a term or two, a Greek class at the London University. His classical and otherreading was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme ofmathematics, or logic--of any, in short, of those subjects which train, even coerce, the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite fora nature in which the creative imagination was predominant over all theother mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, evenas poet, he suffered from this omission: since the involutions andoverlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his earlier and againin his latest works, must have been partly due to his never learning tofollow the processes of more normally constituted minds. It would bea great error to suppose that they ever arose from the absence of ameaning clearly felt, if not always clearly thought out, by himself. Hewas storing his memory and enriching his mind; but precisely in sodoing he was nourishing the consciousness of a very vivid and urgentpersonality; and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of ahome-bred youth, it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he foundin verse we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may thenhave written. It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, still more, the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towardspoetic production. It would be a relief to him to sketch out andelaborate the plan of his future work--his great mental portrait galleryof typical men and women; and he was doing so during at least the lateryears which preceded the birth of 'Pauline'. But even this must havebeen the result of some protracted travail with himself; because it wasonly the inward sense of very varied possibilities of existence whichcould have impelled him towards this kind of creation. No character heever produced was merely a figment of the brain. 

It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he shouldhave been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other. The always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness. Hebehaved as a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believesthat he is not appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms whichhis cleverness assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds. Heset the judgments of those about him at defiance, and gratuitouslyproclaimed himself everything that he was, and some things that he wasnot. All this subdued itself as time advanced, and the coming man in himcould throw off the wayward child. It was all so natural that it mightwell be forgotten. But it distressed his mother, the one being in theworld whom he entirely loved; and deserves remembering in the tendersorrow with which he himself remembered it. He was always ready tosay that he had been worth little in his young days; indeed, hisself-depreciation covered the greater part of his life. This was, perhaps, one reason of the difficulty of inducing him to dwell uponhis past. 'I am better now, ' he has said more than once, when itsreminiscences have been invoked. 

One tender little bond maintained itself between his mother and himselfso long as he lived under the paternal roof; it was his rule never to goto bed without giving her a good-night kiss. If he was out so late thathe had to admit himself with a latch-key, he nevertheless went to herin her room. Nor did he submit to this as a necessary restraint; for, except on the occasions of his going abroad, it is scarcely on recordthat he ever willingly spent a night away from home. It may not standfor much, or it may stand to the credit of his restlessness, that, when he had been placed with some gentleman in Gower Street, for theconvenience of attending the University lectures, or for the sake ofpreparing for them, he broke through the arrangement at the end of aweek; but even an agreeable visit had no power to detain him beyond afew days. 

This home-loving quality was in curious contrast to the naturalbohemianism of youthful genius, and the inclination to wildness whichasserted itself in his boyish days. It became the more striking as heentered upon the age at which no reasonable amount of freedom canhave been denied to him. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for thepecuniary dependence which forbade his forming any expensive habits ofamusement; but he also claims the credit of having been unable to acceptany low-life pleasures in place of them. I do not know how the idea canhave arisen that he willingly sought his experience in the societyof 'gipsies and tramps'. I remember nothing in his works which evensuggests such association; and it is certain that a few hours spent at afair would at all times have exhausted his capability of enduring it. In the most audacious imaginings of his later life, in the mostundisciplined acts of his early youth, were always present curiousdelicacies and reserves. There was always latent in him the realgoodness of heart which would not allow him to trifle consciously withother lives. Work must also have been his safeguard when the habit of ithad been acquired, and when imagination, once his master, had learned toserve him. 

One tangible cause of his youthful restlessness has been implied in theforegoing remarks, but deserves stating in his sister's words: 'Thefact was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. They wereabsolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; hechafed under them. ' He was not, however, quite without congenial societyeven before the turning-point in his outward existence which was reachedin the publication of 'Pauline'; and one long friendly acquaintance, together with one lasting friendship, had their roots in these earlyCamberwell days. The families of Joseph Arnould and Alfred Domettboth lived at Camberwell. These two young men were bred to the legalprofession, and the former, afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould, becamea judge in Bombay. But the father of Alfred Domett had been one ofNelson's captains, and the roving sailor spirit was apparent in hisson; for he had scarcely been called to the Bar when he started for NewZealand on the instance of a cousin who had preceded him, but who wasdrowned in the course of a day's surveying before he could arrive. Hebecame a member of the New Zealand Parliament, and ultimately, for ashort time, of its Cabinet; only returning to England after an absenceof thirty years. This Mr. Domett seems to have been a very modest man, besides a devoted friend of Robert Browning's, and on occasion a warmdefender of his works. When he read the apostrophe to 'Alfred, dearfriend, ' in the 'Guardian Angel', he had reached the last line before itoccurred to him that the person invoked could be he. I do not think thatthis poem, and that directly addressed to him under the pseudonym of'Waring', were the only ones inspired by the affectionate remembrancewhich he had left in their author's mind. 

Among his boy companions were also the three Silverthornes, hisneighbours at Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side. They appearto have been wild youths, and had certainly no part in his intellectualor literary life; but the group is interesting to his biographer. The three brothers were all gifted musicians; having also, probably, received this endowment from their mother's father. Mr. Browningconceived a great affection for the eldest, and on the whole mosttalented of the cousins; and when he had died--young, as they alldid--he wrote 'May and Death' in remembrance of him. The name of'Charles' stands there for the old, familiar 'Jim', so often uttered byhim in half-pitying, and all-affectionate allusion, in his later years. Mrs. Silverthorne was the aunt who paid for the printing of 'Pauline'. 

It was at about the time of his short attendance at University Collegethat the choice of poetry as his future profession was formally made. Itwas a foregone conclusion in the young Robert's mind; and little lessin that of his father, who took too sympathetic an interest in his son'slife not to have seen in what direction his desires were tending. Hemust, it is true, at some time or other, have played with the thought ofbecoming an artist; but the thought can never have represented a wish. If he had entertained such a one, it would have met not only with noopposition on his father's part, but with a very ready assent, nordoes the question ever seem to have been seriously mooted in the familycouncils. It would be strange, perhaps, if it had. Mr. Browning becamevery early familiar with the names of the great painters, and alsolearned something about their work; for the Dulwich Gallery was within apleasant walk of his home, and his father constantly took him there. Heretained through life a deep interest in art and artists, and became avery familiar figure in one or two London studios. Some drawings madeby him from the nude, in Italy, and for which he had prepared himself byassiduous copying of casts and study of human anatomy, had, I believe, great merit. But painting was one of the subjects in which he neverreceived instruction, though he modelled, under the direction of hisfriend Mr. Story; and a letter of his own will presently show that, inhis youth at least, he never credited himself with exceptional artisticpower. That he might have become an artist, and perhaps a great one, is difficult to doubt, in the face of his brilliant general ability andspecial gifts. The power to do a thing is, however, distinct from theimpulse to do it, and proved so in the present case. 

More importance may be given to an idea of his father's that he shouldqualify himself for the Bar. It would naturally coincide with thewidening of the social horizon which his University College classessupplied; it was possibly suggested by the fact that the closest friendshe had already made, and others whom he was perhaps now making, werebarristers. But this also remained an idea. He might have been placed inthe Bank of England, where the virtual offer of an appointment had beenmade to him through his father; but the elder Browning spontaneouslyrejected this, as unworthy of his son's powers. He had never, he said, liked bank work himself, and could not, therefore, impose it on him. 

We have still to notice another, and a more mistaken view of thepossibilities of Mr. Browning's life. It has been recently stated, doubtless on the authority of some words of his own, that the Church wasa profession to which he once felt himself drawn. But an admission ofthis kind could only refer to that period of his childhood when naturalimpulse, combined with his mother's teaching and guidance, frequentlycaused his fancy and his feelings to assume a religious form. From thetime when he was a free agent he ceased to be even a regular churchgoer, though religion became more, rather than less, an integral part of hisinner life; and his alleged fondness for a variety of preachers meantreally that he only listened to those who, from personal associationor conspicuous merit, were interesting to him. I have mentioned CanonMelvill as one of these; the Rev. Thomas Jones was, as will beseen, another. In Venice he constantly, with his sister, joined thecongregation of an Italian minister of the little Vaudois church there. *

 * Mr. Browning's memory recalled a first and last effort at preaching, inspired by one of his very earliest visits to a place of worship. He extemporized a surplice or gown, climbed into an arm-chair by way of pulpit, and held forth so vehemently that his scarcely more than baby sister was frightened and began to cry; whereupon he turned to an imaginary presence, and said, with all the sternness which the occasion required, 'Pew-opener, remove that child. '

It would be far less surprising if we were told, on sufficientauthority, that he had been disturbed by hankerings for the stage. Hewas a passionate admirer of good acting, and would walk from London toRichmond and back again to see Edmund Kean when he was performing there. We know how Macready impressed him, though the finer genius of Keanbecame very apparent to his retrospective judgment of the two; and itwas impossible to see or hear him, as even an old man, in some momentarypersonation of one of Shakespeare's characters, above all of RichardIII. , and not feel that a great actor had been lost in him. 

So few professions were thought open to gentlemen in Robert Browning'seighteenth year, that his father's acquiescence in that which he hadchosen might seem a matter scarcely less of necessity than of kindness. But we must seek the kindness not only in this first, almost inevitable, assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent unfailingreadiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus', 'Sordello', and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published athis father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought no returnto him. This was vividly present to Mr. Browning's mind in what Mrs. Kemble so justly defines as those 'remembering days' which are thenatural prelude to the forgetting ones. He declared, in the course ofthese, to a friend, that for it alone he owed more to his father than toanyone else in the world. Words to this effect, spoken in conversationwith his sister, have since, as it was right they should, found theirway into print. The more justly will the world interpret any incidentaladmission he may ever have made, of intellectual disagreement betweenthat father and himself. 

When the die was cast, and young Browning was definitely to adoptliterature as his profession, he qualified himself for it by reading anddigesting the whole of Johnson's Dictionary. We cannot be surprised tohear this of one who displayed so great a mastery of words, and so deepa knowledge of the capacities of the English language. 

Chapter 5

1833-1835

'Pauline'--Letters to Mr. Fox--Publication of the Poem; chiefBiographical and Literary Characteristics--Mr. Fox's Review in the'Monthly Repository'; other Notices--Russian Journey--Desired diplomaticAppointment--Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of Appearance--'TheTrifler'--M. De Ripert-Monclar--'Paracelsus'--Letters to Mr. Foxconcerning it; its Publication--Incidental Origin of 'Paracelsus'; itsinspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'--Mr. Fox's Review of it inthe 'Monthly Repository'--Article in the 'Examiner' by John Forster. 

Before Mr. Browning had half completed his twenty-first year he hadwritten 'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession'. His sister was in thesecret, but this time his parents were not. This is why his aunt, hearing that 'Robert' had 'written a poem, ' volunteered the sumrequisite for its publication. Even this first instalment of success didnot inspire much hope in the family mind, and Miss Browning made pencilcopies of her favourite passages for the event, which seemed only toopossible, of her never seeing the whole poem again. It was, however, accepted by Saunders and Otley, and appeared anonymously in 1833. Meanwhile the young author had bethought himself of his earlysympathizer, Mr. Fox, and he wrote to him as follows (the letter isundated):

Dear Sir, --Perhaps by the aid of the subjoined initials and a littlereflection, you may recollect an oddish sort of boy, who had the honourof being introduced to you at Hackney some years back--at that timea sayer of verse and a doer of it, and whose doings you had a littlepreviously commended after a fashion--(whether in earnest or not Godknows): that individual it is who takes the liberty of addressing onewhose slight commendation then, was more thought of than all the gundrum and trumpet of praise would be now, and to submit to you a free andeasy sort of thing which he wrote some months ago 'on one leg' and whichcomes out this week--having either heard or dreamed that you contributeto the 'Westminster'. 

Should it be found too insignificant for cutting up, I shall no lessremain, Dear sir, Your most obedient servant, R. B. 

I have forgotten the main thing--which is to beg you not to spoila loophole I have kept for backing out of the thing if necessary, 'sympathy of dear friends, ' &c. &c. , none of whom know anything aboutit. 

Monday Morning; Rev. --Fox. 

The answer was clearly encouraging, and Mr. Browning wrote again:

Dear Sir, --In consequence of your kind permission I send, or will send, a dozen copies of 'Pauline' and (to mitigate the infliction) Shelley'sPoem--on account of what you mentioned this morning. It will perhapsbe as well that you let me know their safe arrival by a line to R. B. Junior, Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell. You must notthink me too encroaching, if I make the getting back 'Rosalind andHelen' an excuse for calling on you some evening--the said 'R. AndH. ' has, I observe, been well thumbed and sedulously marked by anacquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of love. I am, dear sir, Yours very really, R. Browning. Camberwell: 2 o'clock. 

At the left-hand corner of the first page of this note is written: 'Theparcel--a "Pauline" parcel--is come. I send one as a witness. '

On the inner page is written:

'Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R. --pronounced "heavy"--

'A _heavy_ sermon!--sure the error's great, For not a word Tom uttered_had its weight_. '

A third letter, also undated, but post-marked March 29, 1833, refersprobably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. A fourthconveys Mr. Browning's thanks for the notice itself:

My dear Sir, --I have just received your letter, which I am desirous ofacknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me;--Ican only offer you my simple thanks--but they are of the sort that onecan give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, I thinkyou are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel--and it will havebeen worth while to have made a fool of myself, only to have obtained a'case' which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville at a dead lock. 

As for the book--I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve yourgoodness. 

In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir, Your most obliged and obedient servant R. B. S. & O. 's, Conduit St. , Thursday m-g. 

I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I hadintended--but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect atall hazards. 

I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, andnot altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your mostgenerous 'coming forward'. Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewheretells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country who had 'alwaysprophesied he would be something'!--I shall never write a line withoutthinking of the source of my first praise, be assured. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and obliged, Robert Browning. March 31, 1833. 

Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the 'Monthly Repository', which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her gracefularticle on Robert Browning, in the 'Argosy' for February 1890, he wasendeavouring to raise from its original denominational character intoa first-class literary and political journal. The articles comprised inthe volume for 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, at oncemore popular and more solid than those prescribed by the present fashionof monthly magazines. He reviewed 'Pauline' favourably in its Aprilnumber--that is, as soon as it had appeared; and the young poet thusreceived from him an introduction to what should have been, though itprobably was not, a large circle of intelligent readers. 

The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, in afantastic note appended to a copy of it, as 'the only remaining crabof the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise. ' This name is illbestowed upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning'sgenius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor, its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these that Mr. Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologeticpreface to its reprint in 1868. But these faults were partly due to hisconception of the character which he had tried to depict; and partly tothe inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex, in a successionof mental and moral states, irrespectively of the conditions of time, place, and circumstance which were involved in them. Only a verypowerful imagination could have inspired such an attempt. A still moreconspicuous effort of creative genius reveals itself at its close. Themoment chosen for the 'Confession' has been that of a supreme moral orphysical crisis. The exhaustion attendant on this is directly expressedby the person who makes it, and may also be recognized in the vivid, yetconfusing, intensity of the reminiscences of which it consists. Butwe are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis is that ofapproaching death or incipient convalescence, or which character itbears in the sufferer's mind; and the language used in the closing pagesis such as to suggest, without the slightest break in poetic continuity, alternately the one conclusion and the other. This was intended byBrowning to assist his anonymity; and when the writer in 'Tait'sMagazine' spoke of the poem as a piece of pure bewilderment, heexpressed the natural judgment of the Philistine, while proving himselfsuch. If the notice by J. S. Mill, which this criticism excluded, wasindeed--as Mr. Browning always believed--much more sympathetic, I canonly record my astonishment; for there never was a large and cultivatedintelligence one can imagine less in harmony than his with the poeticexcesses, or even the poetic qualities, of 'Pauline'. But this is adigression. 

Mr. Fox, though an accomplished critic, made very light of the artisticblemishes of the work. His admiration for it was as generous as it wasgenuine; and, having recognized in it the hand of a rising poet, it wasmore congenial to him to hail that poet's advent than to register hisshortcomings. 

'The poem, ' he says, 'though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, hastruth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us withthe power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test ofgenius. '

But it had also, in his mind, a distinguishing characteristic, whichraised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism. The articlecontinues:

'We have never read anything more purely confessional. The wholecomposition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambersof thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events aretransitions from one state of spiritual existence to another. '

And we learn from the context that he accepted this confessional andintrospective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life--ofthe essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerestadmirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Itssentiment is warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense, spiritual; but its intellectual activities are exercised on entirelytemporal ground, and this fact would generally be admitted as thenegation of spirituality in the religious sense of the word. Nodifference, however, of opinion as to his judgment of 'Pauline' canlessen our appreciation of Mr. Fox's encouraging kindness to its author. No one who loved Mr. Browning in himself, or in his work, can read thelast lines of this review without a throb of affectionate gratitudefor the sympathy so ungrudgingly, and--as he wrote during his latestyears--so opportunely given:

'In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselvesabout such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for thatafterwards, when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath hadmany particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown, but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted 'Eureka!''

Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known tofame. One only discovered him in his obscurity. 

Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the firstspontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; and his admirationwas, in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances whichprecluded in it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personalinterest or sympathy. But this belongs to a somewhat later period of ourhistory. 

I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning'sliterary career, because the confidence which it gave him determined itsimmediate future, if not its ultimate course--because, also, the poemitself is more important to the understanding of his mind than perhapsany other of his isolated works. It was the earliest of his dramaticcreations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct with himself;and we may regard the 'Confession' as to a great extent his own, withoutfor an instant ignoring the imaginative element which necessarily andcertainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, his utterance is soemphatic that we should feel it to be direct, even if we did not know itto be true. The passage beginning, 'I am made up of an intensest life, 'conveys something more than the writer's actual psychological state. Thefeverish desire of life became gradually modified into a more or lessactive intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense ofan individual, self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him, unconditioned existence, survived all the teachings of experience, andoften indeed unconsciously imposed itself upon them. 

I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment ofdistinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation to the'Sun-treader'. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, justly declaresthat 'the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret mingling withits exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful. ' The'exultation' is in the triumph of Shelley's rising fame; the regret, forthe lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness at an obscureshrine. The double mood would have been characteristic of any period ofMr. Browning's life. 

The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the naturalimagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy insteadof the direct poetic vision of the author's later work. 

'Pauline' received another and graceful tribute two months later thanthe review. In an article of the 'Monthly Repository', and in the courseof a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passageoccurs:

'Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . They arenatives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surelyas a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. 'Probatum est. ' Lastautumn L----dropped a poem of Shelley's down there in the wood, * amongstthe thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found adelicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with'Pauline' hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but ofpleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped, will follow. '

 * Mr. Browning's copy of 'Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic. This and a bald though well-meant notice in the 'Athenaeum' exhaust its literary history for this period. *

 * Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words, Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract from the 'Literary Gazette' of March 23, 1833:

 'Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession', pp. 71. London, 1833. Saunders and Otley. 

 'Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual, and not a little unintelligible, --this is a dreamy volume, without an object, and unfit for publication. '

The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reasonwhy it should be. But 'Pauline' was, from the first, little known ordiscussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet's friends; and when, twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon itin the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise that it hadbeen written by the author of 'Paracelsus'. 

The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning'svisit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russianconsul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, andbeing sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed thathe should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary. The letters written to his sister during this, as during every otherabsence, were full of graphic description, and would have been a mineof interest for the student of his imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscencesof what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressedby some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endlessmonotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companionrushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, withoutseeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-upof the ice on the Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremonyof drinking the first glass of water from it. He was absent about threemonths. 

The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in hisearlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desiredfor his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post ofactivity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman. Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment on amission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wordingof the answer which his application received made him think for a momentthat it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned, through an interview with the 'chief', that the place was otherwisefilled. 

In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the 'MonthlyRepository', extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. Theearliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr. Browning's works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse'sarticle in the 'Century Magazine', December 1881; now part of his'Personalia'. The second, beginning 'A king lived long ago', was to bepublished, with alterations and additions, as one of 'Pippa's' songs. 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' were reprintedtogether in 'Bells and Pomegranates' under the heading of 'MadhouseCells'. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning 'Still ailing, Wind?wilt be appeased or no?' afterwards introduced into the sixth section of'James Lee's Wife'. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of thepoet's future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his mostessential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems. 

This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction, of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends;foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with AlfredDomett. The magazine was called the 'Trifler', and published in monthlynumbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-moneyon the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it oneletter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled'Some strictures on a late article in the 'Trifler'. ' This boyishproduction sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnessesof some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'ADissertation on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine, treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showingthat indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all hissophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentativeand literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence ofdebt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in hislife a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always havepreferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may beforgiven for quoting some passages from it. 

For to be man is to be a debtor:--hinting but slightly at the grand andprimeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hardfor ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do withnutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralistshave concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed anuninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place asrepresented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodgemost commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce, *and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot todischarge--or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it--

 He's most in _debt_ who lingers out the day, Who dies betimes has less and less to pay. 

So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that

 Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c. 

as thou pratest, 'tis plain that they have willed on the very outsetto inculcate this truth on the mind of every man, --no barren andinconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productiverule of life, --that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor--aye, friend, and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander, --no recreant asthou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true--remark, asdid his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast 'paid the_debt_ of nature'? Ha! I have thee 'beyond the rules', as one (a bailiff)may say!

 * Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies is identical with that expressed in these words of 'Prospice', . . . In a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold. 

Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work ofwriting 'Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, and whichoccupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr. Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the followingletters show that the friend of 'Pauline' gave ready and efficient helpin the strangely difficult task of securing a publisher for the newpoem. 

The first is dated April 2, 1835. 

Dear Sir, --I beg to acknowledge the receipt of yourletter:--Sardanapalus 'could not go on multiplying kingdoms'--nor Iprotestations--but I thank you very much. 

You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. Imerely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name andfame among author-folk, besides he has himself written--as the Americanssay--'more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at. ' So I hope we shall cometo terms. 

I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kindinterest, and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you haveas yet seen; indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour, for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise to provenobody after all--'nous verrons'. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly andobliged Robt. Browning. 

On April 16 he wrote again as follows:

Dear Sir, Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no timein presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letterperused than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat--theMoxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon:--'Artevelde' has not paidexpenses by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is 'popular atCambridge', and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last, some 300 only have gone off: Mr. M. Hardly knows whether he shall everventure again, &c. &c. , and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c. 

I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, doreally think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms--I shallknow at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine. 

You will 'sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, youmust need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have ofyour criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely Iam hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance bored yousufficiently: but not a particle of your article has been rejected orneglected by your observant humble servant, and very proud shall I beif my new work bear in it the marks of the influence under which it wasundertaken--and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horacewho anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. I purposelykeep back the subject until you see my conception of itscapabilities--otherwise you would be planning a vase fit to give thego-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus would cut but asorry figure beside--hardly up to the ansa. 

But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive--and likely I hopeto do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a _fresh eye_going over its 4, 000 lines--discovering blemishes of all sorts whichmy one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, obscurepassages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is, --yet on the wholeI am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to beallowed to read it some morning to you--for every rap o' the knuckles Ishould get a clap o' the back, I know. 

I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, Iconceive, but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two--so Idecide on trying the question with this:--I really shall _need_ yournotice, on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo;there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift andscope are awfully radical--I am 'off' for ever with the other side, butmust by all means be 'on' with yours--a position once gained, worthierworks shall follow--therefore a certain writer* who meditated a notice(it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on 'Pauline' in the 'Examiner', must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, but in no case anidle spectator of my first appearance on any stage (having previouslyonly dabbled in private theatricals) and bawl 'Hats off!' 'Down infront!' &c. , as soon as I get to the proscenium; and he may depend thattho' my 'Now is the winter of our discontent' be rather awkward, yetthere shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff--that I shall warm asI get on, and finally wish 'Richmond at the bottom of the seas, ' &c. Inthe best style imaginable. 

 * Mr. John Stuart Mill. 

Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and

(The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph. )

Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, weunderstand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and theauthor than on that of its intrinsic worth. 

The title-page of 'Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmestfriendships of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a youngFrench Royalist, one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berrion her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, spending hissummers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, really--as heconfessed to the Browning family--in the character of private agent ofcommunication between the royal exiles and their friends in France. Hewas four years older than the poet, and of intellectual tastes whichcreated an immediate bond of union between them. In the course of one oftheir conversations, he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possiblesubject for a poem; but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, because it gave no room for the introduction of love: about which, headded, every young man of their age thought he had something quite newto say. Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he wouldwrite a poem on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It wasdedicated, in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom itsinspiration had been due. 

The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friendsdid not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, Mr. Browning heard a voice behind him crying, 'Robert!' He turned, andthere was 'Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married; the Count--then, Ibelieve, Marquis--to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. Mrs. Browning, towhom of course he was introduced, liked him very much. *

 * A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, and in 1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, to both of which learned bodies his friend belonged. 

Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doingproduced a character--at all events a history--which, accordingto recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality than anyconception which had until then been formed of it. He had carefullycollected all the known facts of the great discoverer's life, andinterpreted them with a sympathy which was no less an intuition of theirtruth than a reflection of his own genius upon them. We are enabledin some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled 'Paracelsus, theReformer of Medicine', written by Dr. Edward Berdoe for the BrowningSociety, and read at its October meeting in 1888; and in the difficultywhich exists for most of us of verifying the historical data ofMr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, as well as aninteresting comment upon it. 

Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsuswithout reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in hisday, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotesin illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheimwho was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in thepoem. The passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparentlyanother term for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of allmediaeval occultism, as of all modern theosophy--of a soul-power equallyoperative in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in theconsciousness of man. 

The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparentlyconflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience, of the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit, among the things ofNature, of an ultimate of knowledge, not contained, even in fragments, in her isolated truths; the sense of failure which haunts his mostvaluable attainments; his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic, when the divine has failed; the ascetic exaltation in which he beginshis career; the sudden awakening to the spiritual sterility which hasbeen consequent on it; all these find their place, if not always theircounterpart, in the real life. 

The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards himselfand the world, are not, however, quite consonant with the alleged facts. They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer of the world of abstractthought than to a mystical scientist pursuing the secret of existence. He preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes, a loftiness of tone and aunity of intention, difficult to connect, even in fancy, with the realman, in whom the inherited superstitions and the prognostics of truescience must often have clashed with each other. Dr. Berdoe's pictureof the 'Reformer' drawn more directly from history, conveys this doubleimpression. Mr. Browning has rendered him more simple by, as it were, recasting him in the atmosphere of a more modern time, and of his ownintellectual life. This poem still, therefore, belongs to the same groupas 'Pauline', though, as an effort of dramatic creation, superior to it. 

We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise in the deathbedrevelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story. It supplies afitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus, than to thoseof the historical, whether or not its utterance was within the compassof historical probability, as Dr. Berdoe believes. In any case it wasthe direct product of Mr. Browning's mind, and expressed what was tobe his permanent conviction. It might then have been an echo of Germanpantheistic philosophies. From the point of view of science--of modernscience at least--it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one forwhom evolution could never mean less or more than a divine creationoperating on this progressive plan. 

The more striking, perhaps, for its personal quality are the evidencesof imaginative sympathy, even direct human insight, in which the poemabounds. Festus is, indeed, an essentially human creature: theman--it might have been the woman--of unambitious intellect and largeintelligence of the heart, in whom so many among us have found comfortand help. We often feel, in reading 'Pauline', that the poet in it wasolder than the man. The impression is more strongly and more definitelyconveyed by this second work, which has none of the intellectualcrudeness of 'Pauline', though it still belongs to an early phase of theauthor's intellectual life. Not only its mental, but its moral maturity, seems so much in advance of his uncompleted twenty-third year. 

To the first edition of 'Paracelsus' was affixed a preface, now longdiscarded, but which acquires fresh interest in a retrospect of theauthor's completed work; for it lays down the constant principleof dramatic creation by which that work was to be inspired. It alsoanticipates probable criticism of the artistic form which on this, andso many subsequent occasions, he selected for it. 

'I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset--mistakingmy performance for one of a class with which it has nothing incommon--judge it by principles on which it was never moulded, andsubject it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. Itherefore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably morenovel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers whoseaim it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions, by the operation of persons and events; and that, instead of havingrecourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve thecrisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutelythe mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agencyby which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discerniblein its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogetherexcluded: and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, nota drama: the canons of the drama are well known, and I cannot but thinkthat, inasmuch as they have immediate regard to stage representation, the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such only so long asthe purpose for which they were at first instituted is kept in view. Ido not very well understand what is called a Dramatic Poem, wherein allthose restrictions only submitted to on account of compensating goodin the original scheme are scrupulously retained, as though for somespecial fitness in themselves--and all new facilities placed at anauthor's disposal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously rejected.. . . '

Mr. Fox reviewed this also in the 'Monthly Repository'. The articlemight be obtained through the kindness of Mrs. Bridell-Fox; but it willbe sufficient for my purpose to refer to its closing paragraph, as givenby her in the 'Argosy' of February 1890. It was a final expression ofwhat the writer regarded as the fitting intellectual attitude towards arising poet, whose aims and methods lay so far beyond the range ofthe conventional rules of poetry. The great event in the history of'Paracelsus' was John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner'. Mr. Forster had recently come to town. He could barely have heard Mr. Browning's name, and, as he afterwards told him, was perplexed inreading the poem by the question of whether its author was an old or ayoung man; but he knew that a writer in the 'Athenaeum' had called itrubbish, and he had taken it up as a probable subject for a piece ofslashing criticism. What he did write can scarcely be defined as praise. It was the simple, ungrudging admission of the unequivocal power, aswell as brilliant promise, which he recognized in the work. Thismutual experience was the introduction to a long and, certainly on Mr. Browning's part, a sincere friendship. 

Chapter 6

1835-1838

Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars--Renewed Intercourse with thesecond Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather--Reuben Browning--WilliamShergold Browning--Visitors at Hatcham--Thomas Carlyle--Social Life--NewFriends and Acquaintance--Introduction to Macready--New Year's Eveat Elm Place--Introduction to John Forster--Miss Fanny Haworth--MissMartineau--Serjeant Talfourd--The 'Ion' Supper--'Strafford'--Relationswith Macready--Performance of 'Strafford'--Letters concerning itfrom Mr. Browning and Miss Flower--Personal Glimpses of RobertBrowning--Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration--Relation of 'Strafford'to 'Sordello'--Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'. 

It was soon after this time, though the exact date cannot be recalled, that the Browning family moved from Camberwell to Hatcham. Some suchchange had long been in contemplation, for their house was now toosmall; and the finding one more suitable, in the latter place, haddecided the question. The new home possessed great attractions. Thelong, low rooms of its upper storey supplied abundant accommodation forthe elder Mr. Browning's six thousand books. Mrs. Browning was sufferinggreatly from her chronic ailment, neuralgia; and the large garden, opening on to the Surrey hills, promised her all the benefits of countryair. There were a coach-house and stable, which, by a curious, probably old-fashioned, arrangement, formed part of the house, and wereaccessible from it. Here the 'good horse', York, was eventually put up;and near this, in the garden, the poet soon had another though humblerfriend in the person of a toad, which became so much attached to himthat it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, where itburrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a pinch ofgravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, allowits head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that lovingglance of the soft full eyes which Mr. Browning has recalled in one ofthe poems of 'Asolando'. 

This change of residence brought the grandfather's second family, forthe first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms withhis stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for thisforbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselvesand two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apartfor frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and, in order to be near her relations, she also came to Hatcham, andestablished herself there in close neighbourhood to them. She had thenwith her only a son and a daughter, those known to the poet's friendsas Uncle Reuben and Aunt Jemima; respectively nine years, and one year, older than he. 'Aunt Jemima' married not long afterwards, and is chieflyremembered as having been very amiable, and, in early youth, to useher nephew's words, 'as beautiful as the day;' but kindly, merry'Uncle Reuben', then clerk in the Rothschilds' London bank, * became aconspicuous member of the family circle. This does not mean that thepoet was ever indebted to him for pecuniary help; and it is desirablethat this should be understood, since it has been confidently assertedthat he was so. So long as he was dependent at all, he dependedexclusively on his father. Even the use of his uncle's horse, whichmight have been accepted as a friendly concession on Mr. Reuben's part, did not really represent one. The animal stood, as I have said, in Mr. Browning's stable, and it was groomed by his gardener. The promise ofthese conveniences had induced Reuben Browning to buy a horse instead ofcontinuing to hire one. He could only ride it on a few days of the week, and it was rather a gain than a loss to him that so good a horseman ashis nephew should exercise it during the interval. 

 * This uncle's name, and his business relations with the great Jewish firm, have contributed to the mistaken theory of the poet's descent. 

Uncle Reuben was not a great appreciator of poetry--at all events ofhis nephew's; and an irreverent remark on 'Sordello', imputed to a moreeminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, fromhim. But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that he wasa good linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. Hewas also, apparently, an accomplished classic. Lord Beaconsfield is saidto have declared that the inscription on a silver inkstand, presented tothe daughter of Lionel Rothschild on her marriage, by the clerks at NewCourt, 'was the most appropriate thing he had ever come across;' andthat whoever had selected it must be one of the first Latin scholars ofthe day. It was Mr. Reuben Browning. 

Another favourite uncle was William Shergold Browning, though lessintimate with his nephew and niece than he would have become if he hadnot married while they were still children, and settled in Paris, wherehis father's interest had placed him in the Rothschild house. He isknown by his 'History of the Huguenots', a work, we are told, 'full ofresearch, with a reference to contemporary literature for almost everyoccurrence mentioned or referred to. ' He also wrote the 'Provost ofParis', and 'Hoel Morven', historical novels, and 'Leisure Hours', acollection of miscellanies; and was a contributor for some years tothe 'Gentleman's Magazine'. It was chiefly from this uncle that MissBrowning and her brother heard the now often-repeated stories of theirprobable ancestors, Micaiah Browning, who distinguished himself at thesiege of Derry, and that commander of the ship 'Holy Ghost' who conveyedHenry V. To France before the battle of Agincourt, and received thecoat-of-arms, with its emblematic waves, in reward for his service. Robert Browning was also indebted to him for the acquaintance of M. DeRipert-Monclar; for he was on friendly terms with the uncle of the youngcount, the Marquis de Fortia, a learned man and member of the Institut, and gave a letter of introduction--actually, I believe, to his brotherReuben--at the Marquis's request. *

 * A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning, graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, and is now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son, while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment, connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much. 

The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in his high estimateof the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. On one occasion he tookhis brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. An earlier and muchattached friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, cousin to the notedphysician Dr. Blundell. He enabled the young Robert, whom he knew fromthe age of sixteen, to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and thisaroused in him a considerable interest in the sciences connected withmedicine, though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge ofeither disease or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into hislife. A Captain Lloyd is indirectly associated with 'The Flight of theDuchess'. That poem was not completed according to its original plan;and it was the always welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentlemanwhich arrested its completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered how theclick of the garden gate, and the sight of the familiar figure advancingtowards the house, had broken in upon his work and dispelled its firstinspiration. 

The appearance of 'Paracelsus' did not give the young poet his justplace in popular judgment and public esteem. A generation was to passbefore this was conceded to him. But it compelled his recognition by theleading or rising literary men of the day; and a fuller and more variedsocial life now opened before him. The names of Serjeant Talfourd, Horne, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall (Procter), Monckton Milnes (LordHoughton), Eliot Warburton, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Walter SavageLandor, represent, with that of Forster, some of the acquaintances made, or the friendships begun, at this period. Prominent among the friendsthat were to be, was also Archer Gurney, well known in later life as theRev. Archer Gurney, and chaplain to the British embassy in Paris. His sympathies were at present largely absorbed by politics. He wascontesting the representation of some county, on the Conservative side;but he took a very vivid interest in Mr. Browning's poems; and thisperhaps fixes the beginning of the intimacy at a somewhat later date;since a pretty story by which it was illustrated connects itself withthe publication of 'Bells and Pomegranates'. He himself wrote dramas andpoems. Sir John, afterwards Lord, Hanmer was also much attracted by theyoung poet, who spent a pleasant week with him at Bettisfield Park. Hewas the author of a volume entitled 'Fra Cipollo and other Poems', fromwhich the motto of 'Colombe's Birthday' was subsequently taken. 

The friends, old and new, met in the informal manner of those days, atafternoon dinners, or later suppers, at the houses of Mr. Fox, SerjeantTalfourd, and, as we shall see, Mr. Macready; and Mr. Fox's daughter, then only a little girl, but intelligent and observant for her years, well remembers the pleasant gatherings at which she was allowed toassist, when first performances of plays, or first readings of plays andpoems, had brought some of the younger and more ardent spirits together. Miss Flower, also, takes her place in the literary group. Her sister hadmarried in 1834, and left her free to live for her own pursuits and herown friends; and Mr. Browning must have seen more of her then than waspossible in his boyish days. 

None, however, of these intimacies were, at the time, so important tohim as that formed with the great actor Macready. They were introducedto each other by Mr. Fox early in the winter of 1835-6; the meeting isthus chronicled in Macready's diary, November 27. *

 * 'Macready's Reminiscences', edited by Sir Frederick Pollock; 1875. 

'Went from chambers to dine with Rev. William Fox, Bayswater. . . . Mr. Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus', came in after dinner; I wasvery much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence. . . . I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve myacquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by theproposal, wished to send me his book; we exchanged cards and parted. '

On December 7 he writes:

'Read 'Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry ofthought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer canscarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. . . . '

He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, forthe last evening of the year; and again refers to him under date ofDecember 31. 

'. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning, and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; hissimple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions fromall present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any manI ever saw. '

This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together for thefirst time. The journey to Elstree was then performed by coach, and thetwo young men met at the 'Blue Posts', where, with one or more of Mr. Macready's other guests, they waited for the coach to start. They eyedeach other with interest, both being striking in their way, andneither knowing who the other was. When the introduction took place atMacready's house, Mr. Forster supplemented it by saying: 'Did you see alittle notice of you I wrote in the 'Examiner'?' The two names willnow be constantly associated in Macready's diary, which, except forMr. Browning's own casual utterances, is almost our only record of hisliterary and social life during the next two years. 

It was at Elm Place that Mr. Browning first met Miss Euphrasia FannyHaworth, then a neighbour of Mr. Macready, residing with her mother atBarham Lodge. Miss Haworth was still a young woman, but her love andtalent for art and literature made her a fitting member of the genialcircle to which Mr. Browning belonged; and she and the poet soon becamefast friends. Her first name appears as 'Eyebright' in 'Sordello'. Hisletters to her, returned after her death by her brother, Mr. FrederickHaworth, supply valuable records of his experiences and of his feelingsat one very interesting, and one deeply sorrowful, period of hishistory. She was a thoroughly kindly, as well as gifted woman, and muchappreciated by those of the poet's friends who knew her as a resident inLondon during her last years. A portrait which she took of him in 1874is considered by some persons very good. 

At about this time also, and probably through Miss Haworth, he becameacquainted with Miss Martineau. 

Soon after his introduction to Macready, if not before, Mr. Browningbecame busy with the thought of writing for the stage. The diary hasthis entry for February 16, 1836:

'Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot of a tragedy, which Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. He said thatI had _bit_ him by my performance of Othello, and I told him I hoped Ishould make the blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for themiseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I haveendured in my profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spiritof poetry whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degradeddrama. May it be!'

But Narses was abandoned, and the more serious inspiration and moredefinite motive were to come later. They connect themselves with oneof the pleasant social occurrences which must have lived in the youngpoet's memory. On May 26 'Ion' had been performed for the first time andwith great success, Mr. Macready sustaining the principal part; and thegreat actor and a number of their common friends had met at supper atSerjeant Talfourd's house to celebrate the occasion. The party includedWordsworth and Landor, both of whom Mr. Browning then met for the firsttime. Toasts flew right and left. Mr. Browning's health was proposedby Serjeant Talfourd as that of the youngest poet of England, andWordsworth responded to the appeal with very kindly courtesy. Theconversation afterwards turned upon plays, and Macready, who had ignoreda half-joking question of Miss Mitford, whether, if she wrote one, hewould act in it, overtook Browning as they were leaving the house, andsaid, 'Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America. ' Thereply was, 'Shall it be historical and English; what do you say to adrama on Strafford?'

This ready response on the poet's part showed that Strafford, as adramatic subject, had been occupying his thoughts. The subject was inthe air, because Forster was then bringing out a life of that statesman, with others belonging to the same period. It was more than in the air, so far as Browning was concerned, because his friend had been disabled, either through sickness or sorrow, from finishing this volume by theappointed time, and he, as well he might, had largely helped him in itscompletion. It was, however, not till August 3 that Macready wrote inhis diary:

'Forster told me that Browning had fixed on Strafford for the subject ofa tragedy; he could not have hit upon one that I could have more readilyconcurred in. '

A previous entry of May 30, the occasion of which is only implied, showswith how high an estimate of Mr. Browning's intellectual importanceMacready's professional relations to him began. 

'Arriving at chambers, I found a note from Browning. What can I say uponit? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and caresof years: it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest, honour I have through life received. '

The estimate maintained itself in reference to the value of Mr. Browning's work, since he wrote on March 13, 1837:

'Read before dinner a few pages of 'Paracelsus', which raises my wonderthe more I read it. . . . Looked over two plays, which it was notpossible to read, hardly as I tried. . . . Read some scenes in'Strafford', which restore one to the world of sense and feeling onceagain. '

But as the day of the performance drew near, he became at once moreanxious and more critical. An entry of April 28 comments somewhatsharply on the dramatic faults of 'Strafford', besides declaring thewriter's belief that the only chance for it is in the acting, which, 'bypossibility, might carry it to the end without disapprobation, ' thoughhe dares not hope without opposition. It is quite conceivable that hisfirst complete study of the play, and first rehearsal of it, brought tolight deficiencies which had previously escaped him; but so completea change of sentiment points also to private causes of uneasiness andirritation; and, perhaps, to the knowledge that its being saved bycollective good acting was out of the question. 

'Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on May 1. Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Fox after one of the last rehearsals:

May Day, Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

Dear Sir, --All my endeavours to procure a copy before this morning havebeen fruitless. I send the first book of the first bundle. _Pray_ lookover it--the alterations to-night will be considerable. The complexionof the piece is, I grieve to say, 'perfect gallows' just now--our _King_, Mr. Dale, being . . . But you'll see him, and, I fear, not much applaud. Your unworthy son, in things literary, Robert Browning. 

P. S. (in pencil). --A most unnecessary desire, but urged on me by Messrs. Longman: no notice on Str. In to-night's True Sun, * lest the otherpapers be jealous!!!

 * Mr. Fox reviewed 'Strafford' in the 'True Sun'. 

A second letter, undated, but evidently written a day or two later, refers to the promised notice, which had then appeared. 

Tuesday Night. 

No words can express my feelings: I happen to be much annoyed andunwell--but your most generous notice has almost made 'my soul well andhappy now. '

I thank you, my most kind, most constant friend, from my heart for yourgoodness--which is brave enough, just now. I am ever and increasinglyyours, Robert Browning. 

You will be glad to see me on the earliest occasion, will you not? Ishall certainly come. 

A letter from Miss Flower to Miss Sarah Fox (sister to the Rev. WilliamFox), at Norwich, contains the following passage, which evidentlycontinues a chapter of London news:

'Then 'Strafford'; were you not pleased to hear of the success of oneyou must, I think, remember a very little boy, years ago. If not, youhave often heard us speak of Robert Browning: and it is a great deal tohave accomplished a successful tragedy, although he seems a good dealannoyed at the go of things behind the scenes, and declares he willnever write a play again, as long as he lives. You have no idea ofthe ignorance and obstinacy of the whole set, with here and there anexception; think of his having to write out the meaning of the word'impeachment', as some of them thought it meant 'poaching'. '

On the first night, indeed, the fate of 'Strafford' hung in the balance;it was saved by Macready and Miss Helen Faucit. After this they musthave been better supported, as it was received on the second nightwith enthusiasm by a full house. The catastrophe came after the fifthperformance, with the desertion of the actor who had sustained thepart of Pym. We cannot now judge whether, even under favourablecircumstances, the play would have had as long a run as was intended;but the casting vote in favour of this view is given by the conduct ofMr. Osbaldistone, the manager, when it was submitted to him. The diarysays, March 30, that he caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produceit without delay. The terms he offered to the author must also have beenconsidered favourable in those days. 

The play was published in April by Longman, this time not at theauthor's expense; but it brought no return either to him or to hispublisher. It was dedicated 'in all affectionate admiration' to WilliamC. Macready. 

We gain some personal glimpses of the Browning of 1835-6; one especiallythrough Mrs. Bridell-Fox, who thus describes her first meeting with him:

'I remember . . . When Mr. Browning entered the drawing-room, with aquick light step; and on hearing from me that my father was out, andin fact that nobody was at home but myself, he said: "It's my birthdayto-day; I'll wait till they come in, " and sitting down to the piano, he added: "If it won't disturb you, I'll play till they do. " And as heturned to the instrument, the bells of some neighbouring church suddenlyburst out with a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, asif in response to the remark that it was his birthday. He was then slimand dark, and very handsome; and--may I hint it--just a trifle of adandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things: quite "theglass of fashion and the mould of form. " But full of ambition, eager forsuccess, eager for fame, and, what's more, determined to conquer fameand to achieve success. '

I do not think his memory ever taxed him with foppishness, though he mayhave had the innocent personal vanity of an attractive young man at hisfirst period of much seeing and being seen; but all we know of himat that time bears out the impression Mrs. Fox conveys, of a joyous, artless confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quicklyreasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experienceshad freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. Theself-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on thisside it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude forkindness, and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of othermen. His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in thisway. He was very attractive to women and, as we have seen, warmly lovedby very various types of men; but, except in its poetic sense, hisemotional nature was by no means then in the ascendant: a fact difficultto realize when we remember the passion of his childhood's love formother and home, and the new and deep capabilities of affection to bedeveloped in future days. The poet's soul in him was feeling its wings;the realities of life had not yet begun to weight them. 

We see him again at the 'Ion' supper, in the grace and modesty withwhich he received the honours then adjudged to him. The testimony hasbeen said to come from Miss Mitford, but may easily have been suppliedby Miss Haworth, who was also present on this occasion. 

Mr. Browning's impulse towards play-writing had not, as we have seen, begun with 'Strafford'. It was still very far from being exhausted. Andthough he had struck out for himself another line of dramatic activity, his love for the higher theatrical life, and the legitimate inducementsof the more lucrative and not necessarily less noble form ofcomposition, might ultimately in some degree have prevailed with him ifcircumstances had been such as to educate his theatrical capabilities, and to reward them. His first acted drama was, however, an interlude tothe production of the important group of poems which was to be completedby 'Sordello'; and he alludes to this later work in an also discardedpreface to 'Strafford', as one on which he had for some time beenengaged. He even characterizes the Tragedy as an attempt 'to freshena jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch. ''Sordello' again occupied him during the remainder of 1837 and thebeginning of 1838; and by the spring of this year he must have beenthankful to vary the scene and mode of his labours by means of a firstvisit to Italy. He announces his impending journey, with its immediateplan and purpose, in the following note:

To John Robertson, Esq. 

Good Friday, 1838. 

Dear Sir, --I was not fortunate enough to find you the day beforeyesterday--and must tell you very hurriedly that I sail this morningfor Venice--intending to finish my poem among the scenes it describes. I shall have your good wishes I know. Believe me, in return, Dear sir, Yours faithfully and obliged, Robert Browning. 

Mr. John Robertson had influence with the 'Westminster Review', eitheras editor, or member of its staff. He had been introduced to Mr. Browning by Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of 'Paracelsus', had promised careful attention for 'Sordello'; but, when the timeapproached, he made conditions of early reading, &c. , which Mr. Browningthought so unfair towards other magazines that he refused to fulfilthem. He lost his review, and the goodwill of its intending writer; andeven Miss Martineau was ever afterwards cooler towards him, though hisattitude in the matter had been in some degree prompted by a chivalrouspartisanship for her. 

Chapter 7

1838-1841

First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr. JohnKenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bells andPomegranates'. 

Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the 'NorhamCastle', a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himselfthe only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, and somecharacteristic personal details, are given in the following letter toMiss Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written before thatyear's summer had closed. 

Tuesday Evening. 

Dear Miss Haworth, --Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom and notice theclear little honey-drop depending from every flower. I have just foundit out to my no small satisfaction, --a bee's breakfast. I only answerfor the long-blossomed sort, though, --indeed, for this plant in my room. Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. All this while I forget that youwill perhaps never guess the good of the discovery: I have, you are toknow, such a love for flowers and leaves--some leaves--that I everynow and then, in an impatience at being able to possess myself of themthoroughly, to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent, --bitethem to bits--so there will be some sense in that. How I remember theflowers--even grasses--of places I have seen! Some one flower or weed, Ishould say, that gets some strangehow connected with them. 

Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park, for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland. 

Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receivelast week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write, --for noneof your written reasons, however. You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, ifthe fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent (excepta scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' the Straits ofGibraltar)--but I did hammer out some four, two of which are addressedto you, two to the Queen*--the whole to go in Book III--perhaps. Icalled you 'Eyebright'--meaning a simple and sad sort of translationof "Euphrasia" into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, orFanny, was--and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there isanything in them to care for, good or bad. Shall I say 'Eyebright'?

 * I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen. 

I was disappointed in one thing, Canova. 

What companions should I have?

The story of the ship must have reached you 'with a difference' asOphelia says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it toForster, I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over&c. , &c. , &c. --As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captainwoke me one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keeluppermost half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to somefloating canvas, and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, andthe little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. Ourmen made the wreck fast in high glee at having 'new trousers out of thesails, ' and quite sure she was a French boat, broken from her mooringsat Algiers, close by. Ropes were next hove (hang this sea-talk!) roundher stanchions, and after a quarter of an hour's pushing at the capstan, the vessel righted suddenly, one dead body floating out; five more werein the forecastle, and had probably been there a month under a blazingAfrican sun--don't imagine the wretched state of things. They were, these six, the 'watch below'--(I give you the result of the day'sobservation)--the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard atfirst. One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was asmuggler bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionateguns, taking up the whole deck, which was convex and--nay, look you!(a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck is hereintroduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square the placewhere the bodies lay. (All the 'bulwarks' or sides of the top, carriedaway by the waves. ) Well, the sailors covered up the hatchway, broke upthe aft-deck, hauled up tobacco and cigars, such heaps of them, andthen bale after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, till thecaptain was half-frightened--he would get at the ship's papers, he said;so these poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, and pitched into thesea, the very sailors calling to each other to 'cover the faces', --nopapers of importance were found, however, but fifteen swords, powderand ball enough for a dozen such boats, and bundles of cotton, &c. , thatwould have taken a day to get out, but the captain vowed that after fiveo'clock she should be cut adrift: accordingly she was cast loose, not athird of her cargo having been touched; and you hardly can conceive thestrange sight when the battered hulk turned round, actually, andlooked at us, and then reeled off, like a mutilated creature from somescoundrel French surgeon's lecture-table, into the most gorgeous andlavish sunset in the world: there; only thank me for not taking you atyour word, and giving you the whole 'story'. --'What I did?' I went toTrieste, then Venice--then through Treviso and Bassano to the mountains, delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you will see. Then toVicenza, Padua, and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (theTyrol), Munich, Salzburg in Franconia, Frankfort and Mayence; down theRhine to Cologne, then to Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Antwerp--then home. Shall you come to town, anywhere near town, soon? I shall be off againas soon as my book is out, whenever that will be. 

I never read that book of Miss Martineau's, so can't understand whatyou mean. Macready is looking well; I just saw him the other day for aminute after the play; his Kitely was Kitely--superb from his flat capdown to his shining shoes. I saw very few Italians, 'to know', that is. Those I did see I liked. Your friend Pepoli has been lecturing here, hashe not?

I shall be vexed if you don't write soon, a long Elstree letter. Whatare you doing, writing--drawing? Ever yours truly R. B. To Miss Haworth, Barham Lodge, Elstree. 

Miss Browning's account of this experience, supplied from memory of herbrother's letters and conversations, contains some vivid supplementarydetails. The drifting away of the wreck put probably no effectivedistance between it and the ship; hence the necessity of 'sailing away'from it. 

'Of the dead pirates, one had his hands clasped as if praying; another, a severe gash in his head. The captain burnt disinfectants and blewgunpowder, before venturing on board, but even then, he, a powerful man, turned very sick with the smell and sight. They stayed one whole dayby the side, but the sailors, in spite of orders, began to plunder thecigars, &c. The captain said privately to Robert, "I cannot restrain mymen, and they will bring the plague into our ship, so I mean quietly inthe night to sail away. " Robert took two cutlasses and a dagger; theywere of the coarsest workmanship, intended for use. At the end of one ofthe sheaths was a heavy bullet, so that it could be used as a sling. The day after, to their great relief, a heavy rain fell and cleansed theship. Captain Davidson reported the sight of the wreck and its conditionas soon as he arrived at Trieste. '

Miss Browning also relates that the weather was stormy in the Bay ofBiscay, and for the first fortnight her brother suffered terribly. Thecaptain supported him on to the deck as they passed through the Straitsof Gibraltar, that he might not lose the sight. He recovered, as weknow, sufficiently to write 'How they brought the Good News from Ghentto Aix'; but we can imagine in what revulsion of feeling towards firmland and healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born inhim. The poem was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simbolitrasportati al Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his;and, in spite of perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, the pencildints are still visible. The little poem 'Home Thoughts from the Sea'was written at the same time, and in the same manner. 

By the time they reached Trieste, the captain, a rough north-countryman, had become so attached to Mr. Browning that he offered him a freepassage to Constantinople; and after they had parted, carefullypreserved, by way of remembrance, a pair of very old gloves worn by himon deck. Mr. Browning might, on such an occasion, have dispensed withgloves altogether; but it was one of his peculiarities that he couldnever endure to be out of doors with uncovered hands. The captain alsoshowed his friendly feeling on his return to England by bringing to MissBrowning, whom he had heard of through her brother, a present of sixbottles of attar of roses. 

The inspirations of Asolo and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'Ina Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequentvexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism whichAsolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself at a muchlater time. 

A second letter to Miss Haworth is undated, but may have been written atany period of this or the ensuing year. 

I have received, a couple of weeks since, a present--an album large andgaping, and as Cibber's Richard says of the 'fair Elizabeth': 'Myheart is empty--she shall fill it'--so say I (impudently?) of my grandtrouble-table, which holds a sketch or two by my fine fellow Monclar, one lithograph--his own face of faces, --'all the rest was amethyst. ' F. H. Everywhere! not a soul beside 'in the chrystal silence there, ' andit locks, this album; now, don't shower drawings on M. , who has so manyadvantages over me as it is: or at least don't bid _me_ of all others saywhat he is to have. 

The 'Master' is somebody you don't know, W. J. Fox, a magnificent andpoetical nature, who used to write in reviews when I was a boy, andto whom my verses, a bookful, written at the ripe age of twelve andthirteen, were shown: which verses he praised not a little; which praisecomforted me not a little. Then I lost sight of him for years andyears; then I published _anonymously_ a little poem--which he, to myinexpressible delight, praised and expounded in a gallant article in amagazine of which he was the editor; then I found him out again; he gota publisher for 'Paracelsus' (I read it to him in manuscript) and is inshort 'my literary father'. Pretty nearly the same thing did he forMiss Martineau, as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the'talk', table-talk was about--I think she must have told you the resultsof the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, and that day's, thedinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. She is to give me adviceabout my worldly concerns, and not before I need it!

I cannot say or sing the pleasure your way of writing gives me--do goon, and tell me all sorts of things, 'the story' for a beginning; butyour moralisings on 'your age' and the rest, are--now what _are_ they?not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about: they are'Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia), for teaching me that word. 

I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclarlooks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him;he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he _has_ taken!) and verylike he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . . 

Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M----to helpyou! I am going to begin the finishing 'Sordello'--and to begin thinkinga Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms on'Strafford') and I want to have _another_ tragedy in prospect, I writebest so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learnedthat a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on mystory; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw itup. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrastwith the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have manyhalf-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thoroughself-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus, or a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling?. . . 

The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and'The Return of the Druses'. 

This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work;it is also very significant of the small place which love had hithertooccupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, evenimaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experiencewas still distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he wasnearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquaintedwith Mr. Kenyon. 

When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by apleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, askedleave to address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert?had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was hestill alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say thatMr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, and though they hadlost sight of each other in after-life, he had never forgotten hisold playmate, but even alluded to him in a little book which he hadpublished a few years before. *

 * The volume is entitled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833), and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays, and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted. 

The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered aschoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is hisface, ' and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognizedthat of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyonproved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in aletter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was oneof the best of human beings, with a general sympathy for excellenceof every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, of Southey, ofLandor, and, in later days, was intimate with most of my contemporariesof eminence. ' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house that the poet saw most ofWordsworth, who always stayed there when he came to town. 

In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by farthe slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. This seemed, indeed, a condition of its peculiar character. It had lain much deeper in theauthor's mind than the various slighter works which were thrown off inthe course of its inception. We know from the preface to 'Strafford'that it must have been begun soon after 'Paracelsus'. Its plan may havebelonged to a still earlier date; for it connects itself with 'Pauline'as the history of a poetic soul; with both the earlier poems, as themanifestation of the self-conscious spiritual ambitions which wereinvolved in that history. This first imaginative mood was alsooutgrowing itself in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedieswritten before the conclusion of 'Sordello' impress us as the product ofa different mental state--as the work of a more balanced imagination anda more mature mind. 

It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet becameembodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical characterof the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginativepsychological treatment, or whether the circumstances among which hemoved seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type. The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and histestimony to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue. That period of Italian history must also have assumed, if it did notalready possess, a great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, since hestudied no less than thirty works upon it, which were to contributelittle more to his dramatic picture than what he calls 'decoration', or'background'. But the one guide which he has given us to the reading ofthe poem is his assertion that its historical circumstance is only tobe regarded as background; and the extent to which he identified himselfwith the figure of Sordello has been proved by his continued belief thatits prominence was throughout maintained. He could still declare, so late as 1863, in his preface to the reprint of the work, that his'stress' in writing it had lain 'on the incidents in the development ofa soul, little else' being to his mind 'worth study'. I cannot thereforehelp thinking that recent investigations of the life and character ofthe actual poet, however in themselves praiseworthy and interesting, have been often in some degree a mistake; because, directly orindirectly, they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to an historicalreality, which his author had grasped, as far as was then possible, butto which he was never intended to conform. 

Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of othermen--the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower intothe larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and thistakes place in accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief thatpoetry is the appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; that the truepoet must be their exponent. The work is thus obviously, in point ofmoral utterance, an advance on 'Pauline'. Its metaphysics are, also, more distinctly formulated than those of either 'Pauline' or'Paracelsus'; and the frequent use of the term Will in its metaphysicalsense so strongly points to German associations that it is difficult torealize their absence, then and always, from Mr. Browning's mind. Buthe was emphatic in his assurance that he knew neither the Germanphilosophers nor their reflection in Coleridge, who would have seemed alikely medium between them and him. Miss Martineau once said to himthat he had no need to study German thought, since his mind was Germanenough--by which she possibly meant too German--already. 

The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail, * thepicturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps forthis very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr. Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not precludethe consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopularcharacter had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, some yearsago, that 'Sordello' was represented in a collection of descriptivepassages which a friend of his was proposing to make. 'There is a greatdeal of that in it, ' he said, 'and it has always been overlooked. '

 * The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I believe, by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of 'The Ring and the Book', and I do not like to use it without saying so. But it is one of those which must have spontaneously suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's readers. 

It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have addedthemselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and thereason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made somecomments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, thenquite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth, who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without makingquite clear to him the source from which they sprang. He took thecriticism much more seriously than it deserved, and condensed thelanguage of this his next important publication into what was nearly itspresent form. 

In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr. Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in thesense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be. 'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of'Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspiredby every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (realor imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, alreadylost the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for theBrowning of 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poemwere in many respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Passes', published oneyear later, the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each hasentered on the inheritance of the other. 

Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly callsthis 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the qualityof humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a stronglymarked philosophy of life--or more properly, of association--fromwhich its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of theseevidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyishin personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flowerwritten at about the same time. 

 * These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'. 

Monday night, March 9 (? 1841). 

My dear Miss Flower, --I have this moment received your very kindnote--of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they aresomewhat lightened already (confess--nay 'confess' is vile--you willbe rejoiced to holla from the house-top)--will go on, or rather gooff, lightening, and will be--oh, where _will_ they be half a dozen yearshence?

Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you andMr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects--meanto song-write, play-write forthwith, --and, believe me, dear Miss Flower, Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning. 

By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'--could we not make some arrangementabout it? The lyrics _want_ your music--five or six in all--how say you?When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode--but 'allgoeth by God's Will. '

The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem, inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first twoverses:

On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Passes'. 

(Query--Passes what?--the critic's comprehension. )

 Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, Automatons of which the world is full, Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, A mighty truth now wondrously displayed. 

 A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies-- Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as any mountain there. 

The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; butthese lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must havemade them a welcome tribute to friendship. 

There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Passes';it is less surprising that there should have been very little of'Sordello'. Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number ofearnest appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirablenotice of these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, inDr. Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poemswhich was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poetsand painters of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering ona period of general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of hislife, and much that has since become most deservedly popular in hiswork. 

'Pippa Passes' had appeared as the first instalment of 'Bells andPomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. Thispoem, and the two tragedies, 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'TheReturn of the Druses'--first christened 'Mansoor, the Hierophant'--werelying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, perhaps not veryvigorously sought, a publisher for them. 

'One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon, the publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing outsome editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparativelycheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poemsas pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be veryinconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that eachpoem should form a separate brochure of just one sheet--sixteen pagesin double columns--the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve orfifteen pounds. In this fashion began the celebrated series of 'Bellsand Pomegranates', eight numbers of which, a perfect treasury of finepoetry, came out successively between 1841 and 1846. 'Pippa Passes'led the way, and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale beinginconsiderable, at a shilling, which greatly encouraged the sale;and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown, at which the price of each numberfinally rested. '

Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series areannounced in the following preface to 'Pippa Passes', of which, in latereditions, only the dedicatory words appear:

'Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter Icare to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured peopleapplauded it:--ever since, I have been desirous of doing something inthe same way that should better reward their attention. What followsI mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out atintervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in whichthey appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. Of course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and toprovide against a certain and but too possible contingency, let mehasten to say now--what, if I were sure of success, I would try to saycircumstantially enough at the close--that I dedicate my best intentionsmost admiringly to the author of "Ion"--most affectionately to SerjeantTalfourd. '

A necessary explanation of the general title was reserved for the lastnumber: and does something towards justifying the popular impressionthat Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight from hisreaders. 

'Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take theopportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meantby that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like analternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so thesymbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such isactually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic)acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authorityalone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, wouldsufficiently convey the desired meaning. "Faith and good works" isanother fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yetGiotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaellecrowned his Theology (in the 'Camera della Segnatura') with blossoms ofthe same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after, and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle buone opere--il qualPomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gliEbrei. "'

The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers of 'Bells andPomegranates' were:

 I. Pippa Passes. 1841. II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842. III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842. Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse; III. My Wife Gertrude. ['Boot and Saddle'. ] Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France. Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish). In a Gondola. Artemis Prologuizes. Waring; I. ; II. Queen Worship; I. Rudel and The Lady of Tripoli; II. Cristina. Madhouse Cells; I. [Johannes Agricola. ]; II. [Porphyria. ] Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 1842. The Pied Piper of Hamelin; a Child's Story. IV. The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. 1843. V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy, in Three Acts. 1843. [Second Edition, same year. ] VI. Colombe's Birthday. A Play, in Five Acts. 1844. VII. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845. 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (16--. )' Pictor Ignotus. (Florence, 15--. ) Italy in England. England in Italy. (Piano di Sorrento. ) The Lost Leader. The Lost Mistress. Home Thoughts, from Abroad. The Tomb at St. Praxed's: (Rome, 15--. ) Garden Fancies; I. The Flower's Name; II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. France and Spain; I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime); II. Spain--The Confessional. The Flight of the Duchess. Earth's Immortalities. Song. ('Nay but you, who do not love her. ') The Boy and the Angel. Night and Morning; I. Night; II. Morning. Claret and Tokay. Saul. (Part I. ) Time's Revenges. The Glove. (Peter Ronsard loquitur. ) VIII. And last. Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy. 1846. 

This publication has seemed entitled to a detailed notice, because it ispractically extinct, and because its nature and circumstance confer onit a biographical interest not possessed by any subsequent issue of Mr. Browning's works. The dramas and poems of which it is composed belong tothat more mature period of the author's life, in which the analysis ofhis work ceases to form a necessary part of his history. Some few ofthem, however, are significant to it; and this is notably the case with'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'. 

Chapter 8

1841-1844

'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'--Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; LadyMartin--Charles Dickens--Other Dramas and Minor Poems--Letters to MissLee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower--Second Italian Journey; Naples--E. J. Trelawney--Stendhal. 

'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was written for Macready, who meant toperform the principal part; and we may conclude that the appeal for itwas urgent, since it was composed in the space of four or five days. Macready's journals must have contained a fuller reference to both theplay and its performance (at Drury Lane, February 1843) than appears inpublished form; but considerable irritation had arisen between him andMr. Browning, and he possibly wrote something which his editor, SirFrederick Pollock, as the friend of both, thought it best to omit. Whatoccurred on this occasion has been told in some detail by Mr. Gosse, andwould not need repeating if the question were only of re-telling it onthe same authority, in another person's words; but, through the kindnessof Mr. And Mrs. Frank Hill, I am able to give Mr. Browning's directstatement of the case, as also his expressed judgment upon it. Thestatement was made more than forty years later than the events towhich it refers, but will, nevertheless, be best given in its directconnection with them. 

The merits, or demerits, of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' had been freshlybrought under discussion by its performance in London through the actionof the Browning Society, and in Washington by Mr. Laurence Barrett; andit became the subject of a paragraph in one of the theatrical articlesprepared for the 'Daily News'. Mr. Hill was then editor of the paper, and when the article came to him for revision, he thought it rightto submit to Mr. Browning the passages devoted to his tragedy, whichembodied some then prevailing, but, he strongly suspected, erroneousimpressions concerning it. The results of this kind and courteousproceeding appear in the following letter. 

19, Warwick Crescent: December 15, 1884. 

My dear Mr. Hill, --It was kind and considerate of you to suppress theparagraph which you send me, --and of which the publication wouldhave been unpleasant for reasons quite other than as regarding my ownwork, --which exists to defend or accuse itself. You will judge of thetrue reasons when I tell you the facts--so much of them as contradictsthe statements of your critic--who, I suppose, has received a stimulusfrom the notice, in an American paper which arrived last week, ofMr. Laurence Barrett's intention 'shortly to produce the play' in NewYork--and subsequently in London: so that 'the failure' of forty-oneyears ago might be duly influential at present--or two years henceperhaps. The 'mere amateurs' are no high game. 

Macready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged at theHaymarket, and retained it for Drury Lane, of which I was ignorant thathe was about to become the manager: he accepted it 'at the instigation'of nobody, --and Charles Dickens was not in England when he did so: itwas read to him after his return, by Forster--and the glowing letterwhich contains his opinion of it, although directed by him to be shownto myself, was never heard of nor seen by me till printed in Forster'sbook some thirty years after. When the Drury Lane season began, Macreadyinformed me that he should act the play when he had brought out twoothers--'The Patrician's Daughter', and 'Plighted Troth': havingdone so, he wrote to me that the former had been unsuccessful inmoney-drawing, and the latter had 'smashed his arrangements altogether':but he would still produce my play. I had--in my ignorance of certainsymptoms better understood by Macready's professional acquaintances--Ihad no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, to 'releasehim from his promise'; on the contrary, I should have fancied that sucha proposal was offensive. Soon after, Macready begged that I would callon him: he said the play had been read to the actors the day before, 'and laughed at from beginning to end': on my speaking my mind aboutthis, he explained that the reading had been done by the Prompter, agrotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, ill at ease in the lovescenes, and that he would himself make amends by reading the play nextmorning--which he did, and very adequately--but apprised me that, inconsequence of the state of his mind, harassed by business and varioustrouble, the principal character must be taken by Mr. Phelps; and againI failed to understand, --what Forster subsequently assured me was plainas the sun at noonday, --that to allow at Macready's Theatre anyother than Macready to play the principal part in a new piece wassuicidal, --and really believed I was meeting his exigencies by acceptingthe substitution. At the rehearsal, Macready announced that Mr. Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the part: on the thirdrehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and sat in a chairwhile Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next morning Mr. Phelps waylaid me at the stage-door to say, with much emotion, that itnever was intended that _he_ should be instrumental in the success of anew tragedy, and that Macready would play Tresham on the ground thathimself, Phelps, was unable to do so. He added that he could not expectme to waive such an advantage, --but that, if I were prepared to waiveit, 'he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the words in hismemory by next day. ' I bade him follow me to the green-room, and hearwhat I decided upon--which was that as Macready had given him the part, he should keep it: this was on a Thursday; he rehearsed on Friday andSaturday, --the play being acted the same evening, --_of the fifth dayafter the 'reading' by MacReady_. Macready at once wished to reduce theimportance of the 'play', --as he styled it in the bills, --tried to leaveout so much of the text, that I baffled him by getting it printed infour-and-twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He wanted me to call it'The Sister'!--and I have before me, while I write, the stage-actingcopy, with two lines of his own insertion to avoid the tragicalending--Tresham was to announce his intention of going into a monastery!all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and Macready alone, couldproduce a veritable 'tragedy', unproduced before. Not a shilling wasspent on scenery or dresses--and a striking scene which had been usedfor the 'Patrician's Daughter', did duty a second time. If your criticconsiders this treatment of the play an instance of 'the failure ofpowerful and experienced actors' to ensure its success, --I can only saythat my own opinion was shown by at once breaking off a friendship ofmany years--a friendship which had a right to be plainly and simply toldthat the play I had contributed as a proof of it, would through a changeof circumstances, no longer be to my friend's advantage, --all I couldpossibly care for. Only recently, when by the publication of Macready'sjournals the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that timewas made known, could I in a measure understand his motives for suchconduct--and less than ever understand why he so strangely disguised anddisfigured them. If 'applause' means success, the play thus maimedand maltreated was successful enough: it 'made way' for Macready's ownBenefit, and the Theatre closed a fortnight after. 

Having kept silence for all these years, in spite of repeatedexplanations, in the style of your critic's, that the play 'failed inspite of the best endeavours' &c. I hardly wish to revive a very painfulmatter: on the other hand, --as I have said; my play subsists, and is asopen to praise or blame as it was forty-one years ago: is it necessaryto search out what somebody or other, --not improbably a jealous adherentof Macready, 'the only organizer of theatrical victories', chose to sayon the subject? If the characters are 'abhorrent' and 'inscrutable'--andthe language conformable, --they were so when Dickens pronouncedupon them, and will be so whenever the critic pleases to re-considerthem--which, if he ever has an opportunity of doing, apart from theprinted copy, I can assure you is through no motion of mine. Thisparticular experience was sufficient: but the Play is out of my powernow; though amateurs and actors may do what they please. 

Of course, this being the true story, I should desire that it were told_thus_ and no otherwise, if it must be told at all: but _not_ as a statementof mine, --the substance of it has been partly stated already by morethan one qualified person, and if I have been willing to let the poormatter drop, surely there is no need that it should be gone into nowwhen Macready and his Athenaeum upholder are no longer able to speakfor themselves: this is just a word to you, dear Mr. Hill, and may bebrought under the notice of your critic if you think proper--but onlyfor the facts--not as a communication for the public. 

Yes, thank you, I am in full health, as you wish--and I wish you andMrs. Hill, I assure you, all the good appropriate to the season. Mysister has completely recovered from her illness, and is grateful foryour enquiries. 

With best regards to Mrs. Hill, and an apology for this long letter, which however, --when once induced to write it, --I could not wellshorten, --believe me, Yours truly ever Robert Browning. 

I well remember Mr. Browning's telling me how, when he returned to thegreen-room, on that critical day, he drove his hat more firmly on to hishead, and said to Macready, 'I beg pardon, sir, but you have given thepart to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied that he should act it;' and howMacready, on hearing this, crushed up the MS. , and flung it on to theground. He also admitted that his own manner had been provocative; buthe was indignant at what he deemed the unjust treatment which Mr. Phelpshad received. The occasion of the next letter speaks for itself. 

December 21, 1884. 

My dear Mr. Hill, --Your goodness must extend to letting me have the lastword--one of sincere thanks. You cannot suppose I doubted for a momentof a good-will which I have had abundant proof of. I only took theoccasion your considerate letter gave me, to tell the simple truth whichmy forty years' silence is a sign I would only tell on compulsion. Inever thought your critic had any less generous motive for alluding tothe performance as he did than that which he professes: he doubtlessheard the account of the matter which Macready and his intimates gavecurrency to at the time; and which, being confined for a while to theirlimited number, I never chose to notice. But of late years I have got to_read_, --not merely _hear_, --of the play's failure 'which all the effortsof my friend the great actor could not avert;' and the nonsense of thisuntruth gets hard to bear. I told you the principal facts in the letterI very hastily wrote: I could, had it been worth while, corroborate themby others in plenty, and refer to the living witnesses--Lady Martin, Mrs. Stirling, and (I believe) Mr. Anderson: it was solely through theadmirable loyalty of the two former that . . . A play . . . Deprivedof every advantage, in the way of scenery, dresses, andrehearsing--proved--what Macready himself declared it to be--'a completesuccess'. _So_ he sent a servant to tell me, 'in case there was a call forthe author at the end of the act'--to which I replied that the authorhad been too sick and sorry at the whole treatment of his play to do anysuch thing. Such a call there truly _was_, and Mr. Anderson had to comeforward and 'beg the author to come forward if he were in the house--acircumstance of which he was not aware:' whereat the author laughed athim from a box just opposite. . . . I would submit to anybody drawing aconclusion from one or two facts past contradiction, whether that playcould have thoroughly failed which was not only not withdrawn atonce but acted three nights in the same week, and years afterwards, reproduced at his own theatre, during my absence in Italy, by Mr. Phelps--the person most completely aware of the untoward circumstanceswhich stood originally in the way of success. Why not enquire how ithappens that, this second time, there was no doubt of the play's doingas well as plays ordinarily do? for those were not the days of a 'run'. 

. . . . . 

. . . This 'last word' has indeed been an Aristophanic one of fiftysyllables: but I have spoken it, relieved myself, and commend all thatconcerns me to the approved and valued friend of whom I am proud toaccount myself in corresponding friendship, His truly ever RobertBrowning. 

Mr. Browning also alludes to Mr. Phelps's acting as not only not havingbeen detrimental to the play, but having helped to save it, in theconspiracy of circumstances which seemed to invoke its failure. This wasa mistake, since Macready had been anxious to resume the part, and wouldhave saved it, to say the least, more thoroughly. It must, however, beremembered that the irritation which these letters express was due muchless to the nature of the facts recorded in them than to the manner inwhich they had been brought before Mr. Browning's mind. Writing on thesubject to Lady Martin in February 1881, he had spoken very temperatelyof Macready's treatment of his play, while deprecating the injusticetowards his own friendship which its want of frankness involved: andmany years before this, the touch of a common sorrow had caused the oldfeeling, at least momentarily, to well up again. The two met for thefirst time after these occurrences when Mr. Browning had returned, awidower, from Italy. Mr. Macready, too, had recently lost his wife; andMr. Browning could only start forward, grasp the hand of his old friend, and in a voice choked with emotion say, 'O Macready!'

Lady Martin has spoken to me of the poet's attitude on the occasion ofthis performance as being full of generous sympathy for those who wereworking with him, as well as of the natural anxiety of a young authorfor his own success. She also remains convinced that this sympathy ledhim rather to over-than to under-rate the support he received. She wroteconcerning it in 'Blackwood's Magazine', March 1881:

'It seems but yesterday that I sat by his [Mr. Elton's] side in thegreen-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful drama, 'A Blotin the 'Scutcheon'. As a rule Mr. Macready always read the new plays. But owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was entrustedon this occasion to the head prompter, --a clever man in his way, butwholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning'smeaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruelfather" [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing andindignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning ofthe verse. But somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few ofthe actors during the rehearsals chose to continue to misunderstand thetext, and never took the interest in the play which they would have donehad Mr. Macready read it. '

Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the wideningperspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare ashe did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred, thather '_perfect_ behaviour as a woman' and her 'admirable playing as anactress' had been (or at all events were) to him 'the one gratifyingcircumstance connected with it. '

He also felt it a just cause of bitterness that the letter from CharlesDickens, * which conveyed his almost passionate admiration of 'A Blot inthe 'Scutcheon', and was clearly written to Mr. Forster in order thatit might be seen, was withheld for thirty years from his knowledge, andthat of the public whose judgment it might so largely have influenced. Nor was this the only time in the poet's life that fairly earned honoursescaped him. 

 * See Forster's 'Life of Dickens'. 

'Colombe's Birthday' was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;* andafterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit, who created the principal part. It was again performed for the BrowningSociety in 1885, ** and although Miss Alma Murray, as Colombe, was almostentirely supported by amateurs, the result fully justified MissMary Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter) in writing immediatelyafterwards in the Boston 'Literary World':***

 * Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston. 

 ** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning Society, and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King, in January 1882. 

 *** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons' 'Introduction to the Study of Browning'. 

'"Colombe's Birthday" is charming on the boards, clearer, more direct inaction, more full of delicate surprises than one imagines it in print. With a very little cutting it could be made an excellent acting play. '

Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting, andalludes in his 'Personalia' to the greatly increased knowledge of thestage which its minute directions displayed. They told also of sadexperience in the sacrifice of the poet which the play-writer so oftenexacts: since they included the proviso that unless a very good Valencecould be found, a certain speech of his should be left out. That speechis very important to the poetic, and not less to the moral, purposeof the play: the triumph of unworldly affections. It is that in whichValence defies the platitudes so often launched against rank and power, and shows that these may be very beautiful things--in which he pleadsfor his rival, and against his own heart. He is the better man ofthe two, and Colombe has fallen genuinely in love with him. But theinstincts of sovereignty are not outgrown in one day however eventful, and the young duchess has shown herself amply endowed with them. ThePrince's offer promised much, and it held still more. The time may comewhen she will need that crowning memory of her husband's unselfishnessand truth, not to regret what she has done. 

'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The Return of the Druses' are bothadmitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage;and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted towitnessing the revival of 'Strafford' or 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', from neither of which the best amateur performance could remove thestigma of past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friendbelonging to the Browning Society told him she had been seriouslyoccupied with the possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assentedto the idea with a simplicity that was almost touching, 'It _was_ writtenfor the stage, ' he said, 'and has only one scene. ' He knew, however, that the single scene was far from obviating all the difficulties ofthe case, and that the Society, with its limited means, did the best itcould. 

I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in 'King Victor and KingCharles' which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while itsoccasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in whichPolixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for _duty's_ sake to retainthe crown, though he will earn, by so doing, neither the credit of avirtuous deed nor the sure, persistent consciousness of having performedone. 

Four poems of the 'Dramatic Lyrics' had appeared, as I have said, in the'Monthly Repository'. Six of those included in the 'Dramatic Lyrics andRomances' were first published in 'Hood's Magazine' from June 1844to April 1845, a month before Hood's death. These poems were, 'TheLaboratory', 'Claret and Tokay', 'Garden Fancies', 'The Boy and theAngel', 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's', and 'The Flight of the Duchess'. Mr. Hood's health had given way under stress of work, and Mr. Browningwith other friends thus came forward to help him. The fact deservesremembering in connection with his subsequent unbroken rule never towrite for magazines. He might always have made exceptions for friendlyor philanthropic objects; the appearance of 'Herve Riel' in the'Cornhill Magazine', 1870, indeed proves that it was so. But the offerof a blank cheque would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to thisconcession, as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literarypurpose. 

'In a Gondola' grew out of a single verse extemporized for a picture byMaclise, in what circumstances we shall hear in the poet's own words. 

The first proof of 'Artemis Prologuizes' had the following note:

'I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained of atragedy I composed, much against my endeavour, while in bed with a fevertwo years ago--it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia;but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once, I soon forgotthe remainder. '*

 * When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for the 'Handbook', he spoke as if his illness had interrupted the work, not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I think, the more striking. 

Mr. Browning would have been very angry with himself if he had known heever wrote 'I _had_ better'; and the punctuation of this note, as well asof every other unrevised specimen which we possess of his early writing, helps to show by what careful study of the literary art he must haveacquired his subsequent mastery of it. 

'Cristina' was addressed in fancy to the Spanish queen. It is to beregretted that the poem did not remain under its original heading of'Queen Worship': as this gave a practical clue to the nature of the lovedescribed, and the special remoteness of its object. 

'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and another poem were written in May 1842for Mr. Macready's little eldest son, Willy, who was confined to thehouse by illness, and who was to amuse himself by illustrating the poemsas well as reading them;* and the first of these, though not intendedfor publication, was added to the 'Dramatic Lyrics', because somecolumns of that number of 'Bells and Pomegranates' still requiredfilling. It is perhaps not known that the second was 'Crescentius, thePope's Legate': now included in 'Asolando'. 

 * Miss Browning has lately found some of the illustrations, and the touching childish letter together with which her brother received them. 

Mr. Browning's father had himself begun a rhymed story on the subject of'The Pied Piper'; but left it unfinished when he discovered that his sonwas writing one. The fragment survives as part of a letter addressed toMr. Thomas Powell, and which I have referred to as in the possession ofMr. Dykes Campbell. 

'The Lost Leader' has given rise to periodical questionings continueduntil the present day, as to the person indicated in its title. Mr. Browning answered or anticipated them fifteen years ago in a letter toMiss Lee, of West Peckham, Maidstone. It was his reply to an applicationin verse made to him in their very young days by herself and two othermembers of her family, the manner of which seems to have unusuallypleased him. 

Villers-sur-mer, Calvados, France: September 7, '75. 

Dear Friends, --Your letter has made a round to reach me--hence the delayin replying to it--which you will therefore pardon. I have been askedthe question you put to me--tho' never asked so poetically and sopleasantly--I suppose a score of times: and I can only answer, withsomething of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth inmy mind--but simply as 'a model'; you know, an artist takes one or twostriking traits in the features of his 'model', and uses them to starthis fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good man orwoman who happens to be 'sitting' for nose and eye. 

I thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism, at an unluckyjuncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But--oncecall my fancy-portrait 'Wordsworth'--and how much more ought one tosay, --how much more would not I have attempted to say!

There is my apology, dear friends, and your acceptance of it willconfirm me Truly yours, Robert Browning. 

Some fragments of correspondence, not all very interesting, and hisown allusion to an attack of illness, are our only record of the poet'sgeneral life during the interval which separated the publication of'Pippa Passes' from his second Italian journey. 

An undated letter to Miss Haworth probably refers to the close of 1841. 

'. . . I am getting to love painting as I did once. Do you know I wasa young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing? Myfather had faith in me, and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies, Iwell know, a certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil and black currantjam-juice (paint being rank poison, as they said when I sucked mybrushes) with his (my father's) note in one corner, "R. B. , aetat. Twoyears three months. " "How fast, alas, our days we spend--How vainthey be, how soon they end!" I am going to print "Victor", however, byFebruary, and there is one thing not so badly painted in there--oh, letme tell you. I chanced to call on Forster the other day, and he pressedme into committing verse on the instant, not the minute, in Maclise'sbehalf, who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, for theBritish Institution. Forster described it well--but I could do nothingbetter, than this wooden ware--(all the "properties", as we say, weregiven, and the problem was how to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason). 

 I send my heart up to thee, all my heart In this my singing! For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; The very night is clinging Closer to Venice' streets to leave me space Above me, whence thy face May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place. 

Singing and stars and night and Venice streets and joyous heart, areproperties, do you please to see. And now tell me, is this below theaverage of catalogue original poetry? Tell me--for to that end of beingtold, I write. . . . I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catchme calling people "dear" in a hurry, except in letter-beginnings!)yesterday. I don't know any people like them. There was a son of Burnsthere, Major Burns whom Macready knows--he sung "Of all the airts", "John Anderson", and another song of his father's. . . . '

In the course of 1842 he wrote the following note to Miss Flower, evidently relating to the publication of her 'Hymns and Anthems'. 

New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey: Tuesday morning. 

Dear Miss Flower, --I am sorry for what must grieve Mr. Fox; for myself, I beg him earnestly not to see me till his entire convenience, howeverpleased I shall be to receive the letter you promise on his part. 

And how can I thank you enough for this good news--all this music Ishall be so thoroughly gratified to hear? Ever yours faithfully, RobertBrowning. 

His last letter to her was written in 1845; the subject being a concertof her own sacred music which she was about to give; and again, althoughmore slightly, I anticipate the course of events, in order to give itin its natural connection with the present one. Mr. Browning wasnow engaged to be married, and the last ring of youthful levity haddisappeared from his tone; but neither the new happiness nor the newresponsibility had weakened his interest in his boyhood's friend. MissFlower must then have been slowly dying, and the closing words of theletter have the solemnity of a last farewell. 

Sunday. 

Dear Miss Flower, --I was very foolishly surprized at the sorrowfulfinical notice you mention: foolishly; for, God help us, how else isit with all critics of everything--don't I hear them talk and see themwrite? I dare-say he admires you as he said. 

For me, I never had another feeling than entire admiration for yourmusic--entire admiration--I put it apart from all other English music Iknow, and fully believe in it as _the_ music we all waited for. 

Of your health I shall not trust myself to speak: you must know whatis unspoken. I should have been most happy to see you if but for aminute--and if next Wednesday, I might take your hand for a moment. --

But you would concede that, if it were right, remembering what is nowvery old friendship. May God bless you for ever (The signature has beencut off. )

In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship, itis believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance of a youngNeapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris; and theybecame such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together. Mr. Scotti was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged theirconveyance, and did all such bargaining in their joint interest as thehabits of his country required. 'As I write, ' Mr. Browning said in aletter to his sister, 'I hear him disputing our bill in the next room. He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles when we haveused only two. ' At Rome they spent most of their evenings with anold acquaintance of Mr. Browning's, then Countess Carducci, and shepronounced Mr. Scotti the handsomest man she had ever seen. He certainlybore no appearance of being the least prosperous. But he blew out hisbrains soon after he and his new friend had parted; and I do not thinkthe act was ever fully accounted for. 

It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went toLeghorn to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter ofintroduction. He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. ValPrinsep, but chiefly in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr. Trelawney had displayed during its course. A surgeon was occupied allthe time in probing his leg for a bullet which had been lodged theresome years before, and had lately made itself felt; and he showedhimself absolutely indifferent to the pain of the operation. Mr. Browning's main object in paying the visit had been, naturally, to speakwith one who had known Byron and been the last to see Shelley alive; butwe only hear of the two poets that they formed in part the subjectof their conversation. He reached England, again, we suppose, throughGermany--since he avoided Paris as before. 

It has been asserted by persons otherwise well informed, that on this, if not on his previous Italian journey, Mr. Browning became acquaintedwith Stendhal, then French Consul at Civita Vecchia, and that he imbibedfrom the great novelist a taste for curiosities of Italian familyhistory, which ultimately led him in the direction of the Franceschinicase. It is certain that he profoundly admired this writer, and if hewas not, at some time or other, introduced to him it was because theopportunity did not occur. But there is abundant evidence that nointroduction took place, and quite sufficient proof that none waspossible. Stendhal died in Paris in March 1842; and granting that he wasat Civita Vecchia when the poet made his earlier voyage--no certaintyeven while he held the appointment--the ship cannot have touched thereon its way to Trieste. It is also a mistake to suppose that Mr. Browningwas specially interested in ancient chronicles, as such. This was one ofthe points on which he distinctly differed from his father. He took hisdramatic subjects wherever he found them, and any historical researchwhich they ultimately involved was undertaken for purposes ofverification. 'Sordello' alone may have been conceived on a ratherdifferent plan, and I have no authority whatever for admitting that itwas so. The discovery of the record of the Franceschini case was, as itsauthor has everywhere declared, an accident. 

A single relic exists for us of this visit to the South--a shell pickedup, according to its inscription, on one of the Syren Isles, October4, 1844; but many of its reminiscences are embodied in that vivid andcharming picture 'The Englishman in Italy', which appeared in the 'Bellsand Pomegranates' number for the following year. Naples always remaineda bright spot in the poet's memory; and if it had been, like Asolo, hisfirst experience of Italy, it must have drawn him in later years themore powerfully of the two. At one period, indeed, he dreamed of it as ahome for his declining days. 

Chapter 9

1844-1849

Introduction to Miss Barrett--Engagement--Motives forSecrecy--Marriage--Journey to Italy--Extract of Letter fromMr. Fox--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford--Life atPisa--Vallombrosa--Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle--Proposed BritishMission to the Vatican--Father Prout--Palazzo Guidi--Fano; Ancona--'ABlot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells. 

During his recent intercourse with the Browning family Mr. Kenyon hadoften spoken of his invalid cousin, Elizabeth Barrett, * and had giventhem copies of her works; and when the poet returned to England, late in1844, he saw the volume containing 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship', whichhad appeared during his absence. On hearing him express his admirationof it, Mr. Kenyon begged him to write to Miss Barrett, and himself tellher how the poems had impressed him; 'for, ' he added, 'my cousin is agreat invalid, and sees no one, but great souls jump at sympathy. 'Mr. Browning did write, and, a few months, probably, after thecorrespondence had been established, begged to be allowed to visither. She at first refused this, on the score of her delicate health andhabitual seclusion, emphasizing the refusal by words of such touchinghumility and resignation that I cannot refrain from quoting them. 'Thereis nothing to see in me, nothing to hear in me. I am a weed fit for theground and darkness. ' But her objections were overcome, and their firstinterview sealed Mr. Browning's fate. 

 * Properly E. Barrett Moulton-Barrett. The first of these surnames was that originally borne by the family, but dropped on the annexation of the second. It has now for some years been resumed. 

There is no cause for surprize in the passionate admiration withwhich Miss Barrett so instantly inspired him. To begin with, he washeart-whole. It would be too much to affirm that, in the course of histhirty-two years, he had never met with a woman whom he could entirelylove; but if he had, it was not under circumstances which favoured thegrowth of such a feeling. She whom he now saw for the first time hadlong been to him one of the greatest of living poets; she was learned aswomen seldom were in those days. It must have been apparent, in the mostfugitive contact, that her moral nature was as exquisite as her mindwas exceptional. She looked much younger than her age, which he onlyrecently knew to have been six years beyond his own; and her face wasfilled with beauty by the large, expressive eyes. The imprisoned lovewithin her must unconsciously have leapt to meet his own. It would havebeen only natural that he should grow into the determination to devotehis life to hers, or be swept into an offer of marriage by a suddenimpulse which his after-judgment would condemn. Neither of these thingsoccurred. The offer was indeed made under a sudden and overmasteringimpulse. But it was persistently repeated, till it had obtained aconditional assent. No sane man in Mr. Browning's position could havebeen ignorant of the responsibilities he was incurring. He had, itis true, no experience of illness. Of its nature, its treatment, itssymptoms direct and indirect, he remained pathetically ignorant to hisdying day. He did not know what disqualifications for active existencemight reside in the fragile, recumbent form, nor in the long yearslived without change of air or scene beyond the passage, not always evenallowed, from bed-room to sitting-room, from sofa to bed again. But hedid know that Miss Barrett received him lying down, and that his veryignorance of her condition left him without security for her ever beingable to stand. A strong sense of sympathy and pity could alone entirelyjustify or explain his act--a strong desire to bring sunshine into thatdarkened life. We might be sure that these motives had been present withhim if we had no direct authority for believing it; and we have thisauthority in his own comparatively recent words: 'She had so much needof care and protection. There was so much pity in what I felt for her!'The pity was, it need hardly be said, at no time a substitute for love, though the love in its full force only developed itself later; but itsupplied an additional incentive. 

Miss Barrett had made her acceptance of Mr. Browning's proposalcontingent on her improving in health. The outlook was therefore vague. But under the influence of this great new happiness she did gainsome degree of strength. They saw each other three times a week; theyexchanged letters constantly, and a very deep and perfect understandingestablished itself between them. Mr. Browning never mentioned his visitsexcept to his own family, because it was naturally feared that ifMiss Barrett were known to receive one person, other friends, or evenacquaintances, would claim admittance to her; and Mr. Kenyon, who wasgreatly pleased by the result of his introduction, kept silence for thesame reason. 

In this way the months slipped by till the summer of 1846 was drawing toits close, and Miss Barrett's doctor then announced that her only chanceof even comparative recovery lay in spending the coming winter in theSouth. There was no rational obstacle to her acting on this advice, since more than one of her brothers was willing to escort her; but Mr. Barrett, while surrounding his daughter with every possible comfort, had resigned himself to her invalid condition and expected her also toacquiesce in it. He probably did not believe that she would benefit bythe proposed change. At any rate he refused his consent to it. Thereremained to her only one alternative--to break with the old home andtravel southwards as Mr. Browning's wife. 

When she had finally assented to this course, she took a preparatorystep which, in so far as it was known, must itself have beensufficiently startling to those about her: she drove to Regent's Park, and when there, stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I donot know how long she stood--probably only for a moment; but I wellremember hearing that when, after so long an interval, she felt earthunder her feet and air about her, the sensation was almost bewilderinglystrange. 

They were married, with strict privacy, on September 12, 1846, at St. Pancras Church. 

The engaged pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett's sanction totheir marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestinecharacter thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise thanrepugnant to Mr. Browning's pride; but it was dictated by the deepestfilial affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be noquestion in so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness withthat of the man she loved; she was determined to give herself to him. But she knew that her father would never consent to her doing so; andshe preferred marrying without his knowledge to acting in defiance of aprohibition which, once issued, he would never have revoked, and whichwould have weighed like a portent of evil upon her. She even kept thesecret of her engagement from her intimate friend Miss Mitford, andher second father, Mr. Kenyon, that they might not be involved in itsresponsibility. And Mr. Kenyon, who, probably of all her circle, bestunderstood the case, was grateful to her for this consideration. 

Mr. Barrett was one of those men who will not part with their children;who will do anything for them except allow them to leave the parentalhome. We have all known fathers of this type. He had nothing to urgeagainst Robert Browning. When Mr. Kenyon, later, said to him that hecould not understand his hostility to the marriage, since there was noman in the world to whom he would more gladly have given his daughterif he had been so fortunate as to possess one, * he replied: 'I have noobjection to the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking ofanother world;' and, given his conviction that Miss Barrett's state washopeless, some allowance must be made for the angered sense of fitnesswhich her elopement was calculated to arouse in him. But his attitudewas the same, under the varying circumstances, with all his daughtersand sons alike. There was no possible husband or wife whom he wouldcordially have accepted for one of them. 

 * Mr. Kenyon had been twice married, but he had no children. 

Mr. Browning had been willing, even at that somewhat late age, to studyfor the Bar, or accept, if he could obtain it, any other employmentwhich might render him less ineligible from a pecuniary point of view. But Miss Barrett refused to hear of such a course; and the subsequentnecessity for her leaving England would have rendered it useless. 

For some days after their marriage Mr. And Mrs. Browning returned totheir old life. He justly thought that the agitation of the ceremonyhad been, for the moment, as much as she could endure, and had thereforefixed for it a day prior by one week to that of their intended departurefrom England. The only difference in their habits was that he did notsee her; he recoiled from the hypocrisy of asking for her under hermaiden name; and during this passive interval, fortunately short, hecarried a weight of anxiety and of depression which placed it among themost painful periods of his existence. 

In the late afternoon or evening of September 19, Mrs. Browning, attended by her maid and her dog, stole away from her father's house. The family were at dinner, at which meal she was not in the habit ofjoining them; her sisters Henrietta and Arabel had been throughout inthe secret of her attachment and in full sympathy with it; in the caseof the servants, she was also sure of friendly connivance. There was nodifficulty in her escape, but that created by the dog, which might beexpected to bark its consciousness of the unusual situation. She tookhim into her confidence. She said: 'O Flush, if you make a sound, Iam lost. ' And Flush understood, as what good dog would not?--and creptafter his mistress in silence. I do not remember where her husbandjoined her; we may be sure it was as near her home as possible. Thatnight they took the boat to Havre, on their way to Paris. 

Only a short time elapsed before Mr. Barrett became aware of what hadhappened. It is not necessary to dwell on his indignation, which at thatmoment, I believe, was shared by all his sons. Nor were they the onlypersons to be agitated by the occurrence. If there was wrath in theBarrett family, there was consternation in that of Mr. Browning. Hehad committed a crime in the eyes of his wife's father; but he had beenguilty, in the judgment of his own parents, of one of those errors whichare worse. A hundred times the possible advantages of marrying a MissBarrett could never have balanced for them the risks and dangers hehad incurred in wresting to himself the guardianship of that frail lifewhich might perish in his hands, leaving him to be accused of havingdestroyed it; and they must have awaited the event with feelings neverto be forgotten. 

It was soon to be apparent that in breaking the chains which bound herto a sick room, Mr. Browning had not killed his wife, but was giving hera new lease of existence. His parents and sister soon loved her dearly, for her own sake as well as her husband's; and those who, if in amistaken manner, had hitherto cherished her, gradually learned, with oneexception, to value him for hers. It would, however, be useless todeny that the marriage was a hazardous experiment, involving risks ofsuffering quite other than those connected with Mrs. Browning's safety:the latent practical disparities of an essentially vigorous and anessentially fragile existence; and the time came when these were to makethemselves felt. Mrs. Browning had been a delicate infant. She had alsooutgrown this delicacy and developed into a merry, and, in the harmlesssense, mischief-loving child. The accident which subsequently underminedher life could only have befallen a very active and healthy girl. *Her condition justified hope and, to a great extent, fulfilled it. Sherallied surprisingly and almost suddenly in the sunshine of her newlife, and remained for several years at the higher physical level: hernatural and now revived spirits sometimes, I imagine, lifting her beyondit. But her ailments were too radical for permanent cure, as the weakvoice and shrunken form never ceased to attest. They renewed themselves, though in slightly different conditions; and she gradually relapsed, during the winters at least, into something like the home-boundcondition of her earlier days. It became impossible that she shouldshare the more active side of her husband's existence. It had to bealternately suppressed and carried on without her. The deep heart-love, the many-sided intellectual sympathy, preserved their union in rarebeauty to the end. But to say that it thus maintained itself as if bymagic, without effort of self-sacrifice on his part or of resignation onhers, would be as unjust to the noble qualities of both, as it would befalse to assert that its compensating happiness had ever failed them. 

 * Her family at that time lived in the country. She was a constant rider, and fond of saddling her pony; and one day, when she was about fourteen, she overbalanced herself in lifting the saddle, and fell backward, inflicting injuries on her head, or rather spine, which caused her great suffering, but of which the nature remained for some time undiscovered. 

Mr. Browning's troubles did not, even for the present, exhaustthemselves in that week of apprehension. They assumed a deeper realitywhen his delicate wife first gave herself into his keeping, and the longhours on steamboat and in diligence were before them. What she sufferedin body, and he in mind, during the first days of that wedding-journeyis better imagined than told. In Paris they either met, or were joinedby, a friend, Mrs. Anna Jameson (then also en route for Italy), and Mrs. Browning was doubly cared for till she and her husband could once moreput themselves on their way. At Genoa came the long-needed rest insouthern land. From thence, in a few days, they went on to Pisa, andsettled there for the winter. 

Even so great a friend as John Forster was not in the secret of Mr. Browning's marriage; we learn this through an amusing paragraph in aletter from Mr. Fox, written soon after it had taken place:

'Forster never heard of the Browning marriage till the proof of thenewspaper ('Examiner') notice was sent; when he went into one of hisgreat passions at the supposed hoax, ordered up the compositor to have aswear at him, and demanded to see the MS. From which it was taken: so itwas brought, and he instantly recognised the hand of Browning's sister. Next day came a letter from R. B. , saying he had often meant to tell himor write of it, but hesitated between the two, and neglected both. 

'She was better, and a winter in Italy had been recommended some monthsago. 

'It seems as if made up by their poetry rather than themselves. '

Many interesting external details of Mr. Browning's married life musthave been lost to us through the wholesale destruction of his letters tohis family, of which mention has been already made, and which he carriedout before leaving Warwick Crescent about four years ago; and Mrs. Browning's part in the correspondence, though still preserved, cannotfill the gap, since for a long time it chiefly consisted oflittle personal outpourings, inclosed in her husband's letters andsupplementary to them. But she also wrote constantly to Miss Mitford;and, from the letters addressed to her, now fortunately in Mr. BarrettBrowning's hands, it has been possible to extract many passages of asufficiently great, and not too private, interest for our purpose. These extracts--in some cases almost entire letters--indeed constitutea fairly complete record of Mr. And Mrs. Browning's joint life tillthe summer of 1854, when Miss Mitford's death was drawing near, and thecorrespondence ceased. Their chronological order is not always certain, because Mrs. Browning never gave the year in which her letters werewritten, and in some cases the postmark is obliterated; but the missingdate can almost always be gathered from their contents. The first letteris probably written from Paris. 

Oct. 2 ('46). 

'. . . And he, as you say, had done everything for me--he loved me forreasons which had helped to weary me of myself--loved me heart to heartpersistently--in spite of my own will . . . Drawn me back to life andhope again when I had done with both. My life seemed to belong to himand to none other, at last, and I had no power to speak a word. Havefaith in me, my dearest friend, till you know him. The intellect is solittle in comparison to all the rest--to the womanly tenderness, theinexhaustible goodness, the high and noble aspiration of every hour. Temper, spirits, manners--there is not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyessometimes and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel. Only, if it hadbeen a dream, the pain of some parts of it would have wakened me beforenow--it is not a dream. . . . '

The three next speak for themselves. 

Pisa: ('46). 

'. . . For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full of beautyand repose, --and the purple mountains gloriously seem to beckon us ondeeper into the vine land. We have rooms close to the Duomo, and leaningdown on the great Collegio built by Facini. Three excellent bed-roomsand a sitting-room matted and carpeted, looking comfortable even forEngland. For the last fortnight, except the last few sunny days, we havehad rain; but the climate is as mild as possible, no cold with all thedamp. Delightful weather we had for the travelling. Mrs. Jameson saysshe won't call me improved but transformed rather. . . . I mean to knowsomething about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get him toopen my eyes for me with a little instruction--in this place are to beseen the first steps of Art. . . . '

Pisa: Dec. 19 ('46). 

'. . . Within these three or four days we have had frost--yes, and alittle snow--for the first time, say the Pisans, within five years. Robert says the mountains are powdered towards Lucca. . . . '

Feb. 3 ('47). 

'. . . Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of hisbooks, but certainly he does not in a general way appreciate our Frenchpeople quite with my warmth. He takes too high a standard, I tell him, and won't listen to a story for a story's sake--I can bear, you know, tobe amused without a strong pull on my admiration. So we have great warssometimes--I put up Dumas' flag or Soulie's or Eugene Sue's (yet he wasproperly impressed by the 'Mysteres de Paris'), and carry it till myarms ache. The plays and vaudevilles he knows far more of than I do, and always maintains they are the happiest growth of the French school. Setting aside the 'masters', observe; for Balzac and George Sand holdall their honours. Then we read together the other day 'Rouge et Noir', that powerful work of Stendhal's, and he observed that it was exactlylike Balzac 'in the raw'--in the material and undeveloped conception . . . We leave Pisa in April, and pass through Florence towards the north ofItaly . . . '

(She writes out a long list of the 'Comedie Humaine' for Miss Mitford. )

Mr. And Mrs. Browning must have remained in Florence, instead of merelypassing through it; this is proved by the contents of the two followingletters:

Aug. 20 ('47). 

'. . . We have spent one of the most delightful of summersnotwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the possibility ofSt. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot certainly it has beenand is, yet there have been cool intermissions, and as we have spaciousand airy rooms, as Robert lets me sit all day in my white dressing-gownwithout a single masculine criticism, and as we can step out of thewindow on a sort of balcony terrace which is quite private, and swimsover with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon water-melonsand iced water and figs and all manner of fruit, we bear the heat withan angelic patience. 

We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them for twomonths, but the new abbot said or implied that Wilson and I stank in hisnostrils, being women. So we were sent away at the end of five days. Soprovoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a sea of hills looking aliveamong the clouds--which rolled, it was difficult to discern. Such finewoods, supernaturally silent, with the ground black as ink. There wereeagles there too, and there was no road. Robert went on horseback, and Wilson and I were drawn on a sledge--(i. E. An old hamper, a basketwine-hamper--without a wheel) by two white bullocks, up the precipitousmountains. Think of my travelling in those wild places at four o'clockin the morning! a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasyof admiration. It was a sight to see before one died and went away intoanother world. But being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days, we had to come back to Florence to find a new apartment cooler than theold, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon, and dear Mr. Kenyon does not comeafter all. And on the 20th of September we take up our knapsacks andturn our faces towards Rome, creeping slowly along, with a pause atArezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni. Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeianrock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful . . . '

Oct. ('47). 

'. . . Very few acquaintances have we made in Florence, and very quietlylived out our days. Mr. Powers, the sculptor, is our chief friend andfavourite. A most charming, simple, straightforward, genial American--assimple as the man of genius he has proved himself to be. He sometimescomes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much. Thesculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light--youwould scarcely marvel if they clove the marble without the help of hishands. We have seen, besides, the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends atVenice; and Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, an authoress andpoetess on her own account, having been introduced to Robert in Londonat Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out, and paid us a visit. A veryvivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough . . . '

In this year, 1847, the question arose of a British mission to theVatican; and Mr. Browning wrote to Mr. Monckton Milnes begging him tosignify to the Foreign Office his more than willingness to take partin it. He would be glad and proud, he said, to be secretary to such anembassy, and to work like a horse in his vocation. The letter is givenin the lately published biography of Lord Houghton, and I am obliged toconfess that it has been my first intimation of the fact recorded there. When once his 'Paracelsus' had appeared, and Mr. Browning had taken rankas a poet, he renounced all idea of more active work; and the tone andhabits of his early married life would have seemed scarcely consistentwith a renewed impulse towards it. But the fact was in some sense dueto the very circumstances of that life: among them, his wife's probableincitement to, and certain sympathy with, the proceeding. 

The projected winter in Rome had been given up, I believe against thedoctor's advice, on the strength of the greater attractions of Florence. Our next extract is dated from thence, Dec. 8, 1847. 

'. . . Think what we have done since I last wrote to you. Taken twohouses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning thecontract. You will set it down to excellent poet's work in the wayof domestic economy, but the fault was altogether mine, as usual. Myhusband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased withthree days through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequencewas that we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go awayourselves--any alternative being preferable to a return of illness--andI am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makesin Italy. So away we came into the blaze of him in the Piazza Pitti;precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace; I with my remorse, and poorRobert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than theangels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of thething--but as to _his_ being angry with _me_ for any cause except noteating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. Sohere we are in the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshinefrom morning till evening, and most days I am able to get out into thepiazza and walk up and down for twenty minutes without feeling a breathof the actual winter . . . And Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes atnight, at nine o'clock, to catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire--and a kinder, more cordial littlecreature, full of talent and accomplishment never had the world's polishon it. Very amusing she is too, and original; and a good deal oflaughing she and Robert make between them. And this is nearly all we seeof the Face Divine--I can't make Robert go out a single evening. . . . '

We have five extracts for 1848. One of these, not otherwise dated, describes an attack of sore-throat which was fortunately Mr. Browning'slast; and the letter containing it must have been written in the courseof the summer. 

'. . . My husband was laid up for nearly a month with fever and relaxedsore-throat. Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands andlanguid eyes--the only unhappiness I ever had by him. And then hewouldn't see a physician, and if it had not been that just at the rightmoment Mr. Mahoney, the celebrated Jesuit, and "Father Prout" of Fraser, knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us onhis way to Rome, pointed out to us that the fever got ahead throughweakness, and mixed up with his own kind hand a potion of eggs and portwine; to the horror of our Italian servant, who lifted up his eyes atsuch a prescription for fever, crying, "O Inglesi! Inglesi!" the casewould have been far worse, I have no kind of doubt, for the eccentricprescription gave the power of sleeping, and the pulse grew quieterdirectly. I shall always be grateful to Father Prout--always. '*

 * It had not been merely a case of relaxed sore-throat. There was an abscess, which burst during this first night of sleep. 

May 28. 

'. . . And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last, little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was, to get to Englandas much in summer as possible, the expense of the intermediate journeysmaking it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case, itappeared manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our wayof taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment and furnish itwould leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of thefirst year in exchange for our outlay, and all but a free residenceafterwards, the cheapness of furniture being quite fabulous at thepresent crisis. . . . In fact we have really done it magnificently, andplanted ourselves in the Guidi Palace in the favourite suite of the lastCount (his arms are in scagliola on the floor of my bedroom). Though wehave six beautiful rooms and a kitchen, three of them quite palace roomsand opening on a terrace, and though such furniture as comes by slowdegrees into them is antique and worthy of the place, we yet shall havesaved money by the end of this year. . . . Now I tell you all this lestyou should hear dreadful rumours of our having forsaken our native land, venerable institutions and all, whereas we remember it so well (it's adear land in many senses), that we have done this thing chiefly in orderto make sure of getting back comfortably, . . . A stone's throw, too, itis from the Pitti, and really in my present mind I would hardly exchangewith the Grand Duke himself. By the bye, as to street, we have nospectators in windows in just the grey wall of a church called SanFelice for good omen. 

'Now, have you heard enough of us? What I claimed first, in way ofprivilege, was a spring-sofa to loll upon, and a supply of rain water towash in, and you shall see what a picturesque oil-jar they have givenus for the latter purpose; it would just hold the Captain of theForty Thieves. As for the chairs and tables, I yield the more especialinterest in them to Robert; only you would laugh to hear us correctone another sometimes. "Dear, you get too many drawers, and not enoughwashing-stands. Pray don't let us have any more drawers when we'venothing more to put in them. " There was no division on the necessity ofhaving six spoons--some questions passed themselves. . . . '

July. 

'. . . I am quite well again and strong. Robert and I go out often aftertea in a wandering walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, better still, at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to puregold under the bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, weare happier than ever. . . . '

Aug. 

'. . . As for ourselves we have hardly done so well--yet well--havingenjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent usto Fano as "a delightful summer residence for an English family, " and wefound it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched intopaleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of theinhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words that no drop ofrain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A "circulating library"which "does not give out books, " and "a refined and intellectual Italiansociety" (I quote Murray for that phrase) which "never reads a bookthrough" (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's mother, who has lived inFano seven years) complete the advantages of the place. Yet the churchesare very beautiful, and a divine picture of Guercino's is worth goingall that way to see. . . . We fled from Fano after three days, andfinding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, resolvedon substituting for it what the Italians call "un bel giro". So we wentto Ancona--a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, andelbowing out the purple tides--beautiful to look upon. An exfoliationof the rock itself you would call the houses that seem to grow there--soidentical is the colour and character. I should like to visit Anconaagain when there is a little air and shadow. We stayed a week, as itwas, living upon fish and cold water. . . . '

The one dated Florence, December 16, is interesting with reference toMr. Browning's attitude when he wrote the letters to Mr. Frank Hillwhich I have recently quoted. 

'We have been, at least I have been, a little anxious lately about thefate of the 'Blot in the 'Scutcheon' which Mr. Phelps applied formy husband's permission to revive at Sadler's. Of course putting therequest was mere form, as he had every right to act the play--only itmade ME anxious till we heard the result--and we both of us are verygrateful to dear Mr. Chorley, who not only made it his business to be atthe theatre the first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a truefriend to give us the story of the result, and never, he says, was amore legitimate success. The play went straight to the hearts of theaudience, it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage, fromthe papers. You may remember, or may not have heard, how Macreadybrought it out and put his foot on it, in the flush of a quarrel betweenmanager and author; and Phelps, knowing the whole secret and feelingthe power of the play, determined on making a revival of it in his owntheatre. Mr. Chorley called his acting "fine". . . . '

Chapter 10

1849-1852

Death of Mr. Browning's Mother--Birth of his Son--Mrs. Browning'sLetters continued--Baths of Lucca--Florence again--Venice--MargaretFuller Ossoli--Visit to England--Winter in Paris--Carlyle--GeorgeSand--Alfred de Musset. 

On March 9, 1849, Mr. Browning's son was born. With the joy of hiswife's deliverance from the dangers of such an event came also hisfirst great sorrow. His mother did not live to receive the news ofher grandchild's birth. The letter which conveyed it found her stillbreathing, but in the unconsciousness of approaching death. There hadbeen no time for warning. The sister could only break the suddenness ofthe shock. A letter of Mrs. Browning's tells what was to be told. 

Florence: April 30 ('49). 

'. . . This is the first packet of letters, except one to WimpoleStreet, which I have written since my confinement. You will haveheard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of myhusband's mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart)terminated in a fatal way--and she lay in the insensibility precursiveof the grave's when the letter written with such gladness by my poorhusband and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address. "Itwould have made her heart bound, " said her daughter to us. Poor tenderheart--the last throb was too near. The medical men would not allowthe news to be communicated. The next joy she felt was to be in heavenitself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, and indeed, exceptfor the courageous consideration of his sister who wrote two letters ofpreparation, saying "She was not well" and she "was very ill" when infact all was over, I am frightened to think what the result would havebeen to him. He has loved his mother as such passionate natures onlycan love, and I never saw a man so bowed down in an extremity ofsorrow--never. Even now, the depression is great--and sometimes when Ileave him alone a little and return to the room, I find him in tears. Ido earnestly wish to change the scene and air--but where to go? Englandlooks terrible now. He says it would break his heart to see his mother'sroses over the wall and the place where she used to lay her scissors andgloves--which I understand so thoroughly that I can't say "Let us go toEngland. " We must wait and see what his father and sister will choose todo, or choose us to do--for of course a duty plainly seen would draw usanywhere. My own dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by anychange of plan--only they are too good and kind not to understand thedifficulty--not to see the motive. So do you, I am certain. It has beenvery, very painful altogether, this drawing together of life and death. Robert was too enraptured at my safety and with his little son, and thesudden reaction was terrible. . . . '

Bagni di Lucca. 

'. . . We have been wandering in search of cool air and a cool boughamong all the olive trees to build our summer nest on. My husband hasbeen suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to, in consequenceof the great mental shock of last March--loss of appetite, loss ofsleep--looks quite worn and altered. His spirits never rallied exceptwith an effort, and every letter from New Cross threw him back into deepdepression. I was very anxious, and feared much that the end of itall would be (the intense heat of Florence assisting) nervous fever orsomething similar; and I had the greatest difficulty in persuadinghim to leave Florence for a month or two. He who generally delights intravelling, had no mind for change or movement. I had to say and swearthat Baby and I couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would goaway. "Ce que femme veut, _homme_ veut, " if the latter is at all amiable, or the former persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreedthat we two should go on an exploring journey, to find out where wecould have most shadow at least expense; and we left our child withhis nurse and Wilson, while we were absent. We went along the coast toSpezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed throughthe olive-forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnutwoods, glorious surprises of the most exquisite scenery. I sayolive-forests advisedly--the olive grows like a forest-tree in thoseregions, shading the ground with tints of silvery network. The olivenear Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despisea little too the Florentine vine, which does not swing such portcullisesof massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole roadwhere we travelled. Beautiful indeed it was. Spezzia wheels the blue seainto the arms of the wooded mountains; and we had a glance at Shelley'shouse at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of course. I was not sorrythat the lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. Wereturned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains, where rock river andwood enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants drove us off by theirunreasonable prices. It is curious--but just in proportion to thewant of civilization the prices rise in Italy. If you haven't cups andsaucers, you are made to pay for plate. Well--so finding no rest for thesoles of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, onlyto see them. We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello, or somesafer wilderness. We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongestprejudice against the Baths of Lucca; taking them for a sort of wasp'snest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything troddenflat by the continental English--yet, I wanted to see the place, becauseit is a place to see, after all. So we came, and were so charmed by theexquisite beauty of the scenery, by the coolness of the climate, andthe absence of our countrymen--political troubles serving admirably ourprivate requirements, that we made an offer for rooms on the spot, andreturned to Florence for Baby and the rest of our establishmentwithout further delay. Here we are then. We have been here more thana fortnight. We have taken an apartment for the season--four months, paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able to staytill the end of October. The living is cheaper than even in Florence, sothat there has been no extravagance in coming here. In fact Florence isscarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat by day andnight, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. We havetaken a sort of eagle's nest in this place--the highest house of thehighest of the three villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, andwhich lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by arushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicale is allthe noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage-wheels cannot vex us, Godbe thanked for it! The silence is full of joy and consolation. I thinkmy husband's spirits are better already, and his appetite improved. Certainly little Babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. Heis out all day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have itthat he is prettier than the whole population of babies here. . . . Thenmy whole strength has wonderfully improved--just as my medical friendsprophesied, --and it seems like a dream when I find myself able to climbthe hills with Robert, and help him to lose himself in the forests. Ever since my confinement I have been growing stronger and stronger, andwhere it is to stop I can't tell really. I can do as much or more thanat any point of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air ofthe place seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: itdraws you, raises you, excites you. Mountain air without itskeenness--sheathed in Italian sunshine--think what that must be! Andthe beauty and the solitude--for with a few paces we get free ofthe habitations of men--all is delightful to me. What is peculiarlybeautiful and wonderful, is the variety of the shapes of the mountains. They are a multitude--and yet there is no likeness. None, except wherethe golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For therest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like thatbare peak which tilts against the sky--nor like the serpent-twine ofanother which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. . . . '

She writes again:

Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49). 

'. . . I have performed a great exploit--ridden on a donkey five milesdeep into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground notfar from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (withBaby) on other donkies, --guides of course. We set off at eight in themorning, and returned at six P. M. After dining on the mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colourfor all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains couldhave kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, onecould not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhaustedtorrents--above and through the chestnut forests precipitous beyondwhat you would think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing theground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly, as we looked round on the world of innumerablemountains, bound faintly with the grey sea--and not a human habitation.. . . '

The following fragment, which I have received quite without date, mightrefer to this or to a somewhat later period. 

'If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improvedhealth, and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people, ofhow your wife walked here with you, and there with you, as if a wifewith a pair of feet was a miracle of nature. "'

Florence: Feb. 18 ('50). 

'. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live, and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English societyhere. Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . . '

Florence: April 1 ('50). 

'. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, just sweepingthrough the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello looked outto see the Duke go by--and just such a door where Tasso stood and whereDante drew his chair out to sit. Strange to have all that old world lifeabout us, and the blue sky so bright. . . . '

Venice: June 4 (probably '50). 

'. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice. The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of socelestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails ofwater up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchantingsilence, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up together and maintainthat nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in theworld. 

'Do you know when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. Butnow comes the earth-side. 

'Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable and nervous, unable to eat or sleep, and poor Wilson still worse, in a miserablecondition of sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices, soexquisite and so bilious. Therefore I am constrained away from my joysby sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going away on Friday. For myself, it did not affect me at all. Take the mild, soft, relaxingclimate--even the scirocco does not touch me. And the baby growsgloriously fatter in spite of everything. . . . As for Venice, you can'tget even a "Times", much less an "Athenaeum". We comfort ourselves bytaking a box at the opera (a whole box on the grand tier, mind) fortwo shillings and eightpence, English. Also, every evening at half-pasteight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza ofSt. Mark, taking excellent coffee and reading the French papers. '

If it were possible to draw more largely on Mrs. Browning'scorrespondence for this year, it would certainly supply the record ofher intimacy, and that of her husband, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Awarm attachment sprang up between them during that lady's residence inFlorence. Its last evenings were all spent at their house; and, soonafter she had bidden them farewell, she availed herself of a two days'delay in the departure of the ship to return from Leghorn and be withthem one evening more. She had what seemed a prophetic dread of thevoyage to America, though she attached no superstitious importance tothe prediction once made to her husband that he would be drowned; andlearned when it was too late to change her plans that her presence therewas, after all, unnecessary. Mr. Browning was deeply affected by thenews of her death by shipwreck, which took place on July 16, 1850; andwrote an account of his acquaintance with her, for publication by herfriends. This also, unfortunately, was lost. Her son was of the sameage as his, little more than a year old; but she left a token of thefriendship which might some day have united them, in a small Bibleinscribed to the baby Robert, 'In memory of Angelo Ossoli. '

The intended journey to England was delayed for Mr. Browning by thepainful associations connected with his mother's death; but in thesummer of 1851 he found courage to go there: and then, as on eachsucceeding visit paid to London with his wife, he commemorated hismarriage in a manner all his own. He went to the church in which it hadbeen solemnized, and kissed the paving-stones in front of the door. Itneeded all this love to comfort Mrs. Browning in the estrangement fromher father which was henceforth to be accepted as final. He had held nocommunication with her since her marriage, and she knew that it wasnot forgiven; but she had cherished a hope that he would so far relenttowards her as to kiss her child, even if he would not see her. Herprayer to this effect remained, however, unanswered. 

In the autumn they proceeded to Paris; whence Mrs. Browning wrote, October 22 and November 12. 

138, Avenue des Champs Elysees. 

'. . . It was a long time before we could settle ourselves in a privateapartment. . . . At last we came off to these Champs Elysees, to a verypleasant apartment, the window looking over a large terrace (almostlarge enough to serve the purpose of a garden) to the great drive andpromenade of the Parisians when they come out of the streets to sunand shade and show themselves off among the trees. A pretty littledining-room, a writing and dressing-room for Robert beside it, adrawing-room beyond that, with two excellent bedrooms, and thirdbedroom for a "femme de menage", kitchen, &c. . . . So this answers allrequirements, and the sun suns us loyally as in duty bound consideringthe southern aspect, and we are glad to find ourselves settled for sixmonths. We have had lovely weather, and have seen a fire only yesterdayfor the first time since we left England. . . . We have seen nothing inParis, except the shell of it. Yet, two evenings ago we hazarded goingto a reception at Lady Elgin's, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and sawsome French, but nobody of distinction. 

'It is a good house, I believe, and she has an earnest face which mustmean something. We were invited to go every Monday between eight andtwelve. We go on Friday to Madame Mohl's, where we are to have some ofthe "celebrites". . . . Carlyle, for instance, I liked infinitely morein his personality than I expected to like him, and I saw a great dealof him, for he travelled with us to Paris, and spent several eveningswith us, we three together. He is one of the most interesting men Icould imagine, even deeply interesting to me; and you come to understandperfectly when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, andhis scorn, sensibility. Highly picturesque, too, he is in conversation;the talk of writing men is very seldom so good. 

'And, do you know, I was much taken, in London, with a young authoress, Geraldine Jewsbury. You have read her books. . . . She herself is quietand simple, and drew my heart out of me a good deal. I felt inclined tolove her in our half-hour's intercourse. . . . '

138, Avenue des Champs Elysees: (Nov. 12). 

'. . . Robert's father and sister have been paying us a visit during thelast three weeks. They are very affectionate to me, and I love them forhis sake and their own, and am very sorry at the thought of losing them, as we are on the point of doing. We hope, however, to establish them inParis, if we can stay, and if no other obstacle should arise before thespring, when they must leave Hatcham. Little Wiedemann 'draws', as youmay suppose . . . He is adored by his grandfather, and then, Robert!They are an affectionate family, and not easy when removed one fromanother. . . . '

On their journey from London to Paris, Mr. And Mrs. Browning had beenjoined by Carlyle; and it afterwards struck Mr. Browning as strangethat, in the 'Life' of Carlyle, their companionship on this occasionshould be spoken of as the result of a chance meeting. Carlyle not onlywent to Paris with the Brownings, but had begged permission to do so;and Mrs. Browning had hesitated to grant this because she was afraid herlittle boy would be tiresome to him. Her fear, however, proved mistaken. The child's prattle amused the philosopher, and led him on one occasionto say: 'Why, sir, you have as many aspirations as Napoleon!' AtParis he would have been miserable without Mr. Browning's help, in hisignorance of the language, and impatience of the discomforts which thiscreated for him. He couldn't ask for anything, he complained, but theybrought him the opposite. 

On one occasion Mr. Carlyle made a singular remark. He was walking withMr. Browning, either in Paris or the neighbouring country, when theypassed an image of the Crucifixion; and glancing towards the figure ofChrist, he said, with his deliberate Scotch utterance, 'Ah, poor fellow, _your_ part is played out!'

Two especially interesting letters are dated from the same address, February 15 and April 7, 1852. 

'. . . Beranger lives close to us, and Robert has seen him in his whitehat, wandering along the asphalte. I had a notion, somehow, that he wasvery old, but he is only elderly--not much above sixty (which is theprime of life, nowadays) and he lives quietly and keeps out of scrapespoetical and political, and if Robert and I had a little less modesty weare assured that we should find access to him easy. But we can't makeup our minds to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrantminstrels, when he may probably not know our names. We could neverfollow the fashion of certain authors, who send their books about withintimations of their being likely to be acceptable or not--of whichpractice poor Tennyson knows too much for his peace. If, indeed, aletter of introduction to Beranger were vouchsafed to us from any benignquarter, we should both be delighted, but we must wait patiently forthe influence of the stars. Meanwhile, we have at last sent our letter[Mazzini's] to George Sand, accompanied with a little note signed byboth of us, though written by me, as seemed right, being the woman. Wehalf-despaired in doing this--for it is most difficult, it appears, to get at her, she having taken vows against seeing strangers, inconsequence of various annoyances and persecutions, in and out of print, which it's the mere instinct of a woman to avoid--I can understand itperfectly. Also, she is in Paris for only a few days, and under a newname, to escape from the plague of her notoriety. People said, "She willnever see you--you have no chance, I am afraid. " But we determinedto try. At least I pricked Robert up to the leap--for he was reallyinclined to sit in his chair and be proud a little. "No, " said I, "you_sha'n't_ be proud, and I _won't_ be proud, and we _will_ see her--I won'tdie, if I can help it, without seeing George Sand. " So we gave ourletter to a friend, who was to give it to a friend who was to place itin her hands--her abode being a mystery, and the name she used unknown. The next day came by the post this answer:

'"Madame, j'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche prochain, rueRacine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; et encoreje n'en suis pas absolument certaine--mais je ferai tellement monpossible, que ma bonne etoile m'y aidera peut-etre un peu. Agreezmille remerciments de coeur ainsi que Monsieur Browning, que j'esperevoir avec vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez. George Sand. Paris: 12 fevrier '52. "

'This is graceful and kind, is it not?--and we are going to-morrow--I, rather at the risk of my life, but I shall roll myself up head and allin a thick shawl, and we shall go in a close carriage, and I hope Ishall be able to tell you the result before shutting up this letter. 

'Monday. --I have seen G. S. She received us in a room with a bed in it, the only room she has to occupy, I suppose, during her short stay inParis. She received us very cordially with her hand held out, whichI, in the emotion of the moment, stooped and kissed--upon which sheexclaimed, "Mais non! je ne veux pas, " and kissed me. I don't thinkshe is a great deal taller than I am, --yes, taller, but not a greatdeal--and a little over-stout for that height. The upper part of theface is fine, the forehead, eyebrows and eyes--dark glowing eyes as theyshould be; the lower part not so good. The beautiful teeth project alittle, flashing out the smile of the large characteristic mouth, andthe chin recedes. It never could have been a beautiful face Robert andI agree, but noble and expressive it has been and is. The complexion isolive, quite without colour; the hair, black and glossy, divided withevident care and twisted back into a knot behind the head, and she woreno covering to it. Some of the portraits represent her in ringlets, andringlets would be much more becoming to the style of face, I fancy, forthe cheeks are rather over-full. She was dressed in a sort of woollengrey gown, with a jacket of the same material (according to the rulingfashion), the gown fastened up to the throat, with a small linencollarette, and plain white muslin sleeves buttoned round the wrists. The hands offered to me were small and well-shaped. Her manners werequite as simple as her costume. I never saw a simpler woman. Not a shadeof affectation or consciousness, even--not a suffusion of coquetry, nota cigarette to be seen! Two or three young men were sitting with her, and I observed the profound respect with which they listened to everyword she said. She spoke rapidly, with a low, unemphatic voice. Reposeof manner is much more her characteristic than animation is--only, under all the quietness, and perhaps by means of it, you are aware of anintense burning soul. She kissed me again when we went away. . . . '

'April 7. --George Sand we came to know a great deal more of. I thinkRobert saw her six times. Once he met her near the Tuileries, offeredher his arm and walked with her the whole length of the gardens. She wasnot on that occasion looking as well as usual, being a little too much"endimanchee" in terrestrial lavenders and super-celestial blues--not, in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in herat other times. Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and thefashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are respectable in all the"Ladies' Companions" of the day) make the only approach to masculinewearings to be observed in her. 

'She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think--andthe cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood. 

'Ah! but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I could only go withRobert three times to her house, and once she was out. He was reallyvery good and kind to let me go at all after he found the sort ofsociety rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, but being theprince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires, and yielded the point. She seems to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regardssociety--crowds of ill-bred men who adore her, 'a genoux bas', betwixta puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva--society of the ragged red, diluted with the low theatrical. She herself so different, so apart, soalone in her melancholy disdain. I was deeply interested in that poorwoman. I felt a profound compassion for her. I did not mind mucheven the Greek, in Greek costume, who 'tutoyed' her, and kissed her Ibelieve, so Robert said--or the other vulgar man of the theatre, whowent down on his knees and called her "sublime". "Caprice d'amitie, "said she with her quiet, gentle scorn. A noble woman under the mud, becertain. _I_ would kneel down to her, too, if she would leave it all, throw it off, and be herself as God made her. But she would not care formy kneeling--she does not care for me. Perhaps she doesn't care muchfor anybody by this time, who knows? She wrote one or two or three kindnotes to me, and promised to 'venir m'embrasser' before she left Paris, but she did not come. We both tried hard to please her, and she told afriend of ours that she "liked us". Only we always felt that we couldn'tpenetrate--couldn't really _touch_ her--it was all vain. 

'Alfred de Musset was to have been at M. Buloz' where Robert was aweek ago, on purpose to meet him, but he was prevented in some way. Hisbrother, Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead, butwe hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? He isnot capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, I assure you. . . . We are expecting a visit from Lamartine, who does agreat deal of honour to both of us in the way of appreciation, and waskind enough to propose to come. I will tell you all about it. '

Mr. Browning fully shared his wife's impression of a want of frankcordiality on George Sand's part; and was especially struck by it inreference to himself, with whom it seemed more natural that she shouldfeel at ease. He could only imagine that his studied courtesy towardsher was felt by her as a rebuke to the latitude which she granted toother men. 

Another eminent French writer whom he much wished to know was VictorHugo, and I am told that for years he carried about him a letter ofintroduction from Lord Houghton, always hoping for an opportunity ofpresenting it. The hope was not fulfilled, though, in 1866, Mr. Browningcrossed to Saint Malo by the Channel Islands and spent three days inJersey. 

Chapter 11

1852-1855

M. Joseph Milsand--His close Friendship with Mr. Browning; Mrs. Browning's Impression of him--New Edition of Mr. Browning'sPoems--'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'--'Essay' on Shelley--Summer inLondon--Dante Gabriel Rossetti--Florence; secluded Life--Letters fromMr. And Mrs. Browning--'Colombe's Birthday'--Baths of Lucca--Mrs. Browning's Letters--Winter in Rome--Mr. And Mrs. Story--Mrs. Sartoris--Mrs. Fanny Kemble--Summer in London--Tennyson--Ruskin. 

It was during this winter in Paris that Mr. Browning became acquaintedwith M. Joseph Milsand, the second Frenchman with whom he was to beunited by ties of deep friendship and affection. M. Milsand was at thattime, and for long afterwards, a frequent contributor to the 'Revuedes Deux Mondes'; his range of subjects being enlarged by his, fora Frenchman, exceptional knowledge of English life, language, andliterature. He wrote an article on Quakerism, which was much approved byMr. William Forster, and a little volume on Ruskin called 'L'EsthetiqueAnglaise', which was published in the 'Bibliotheque de PhilosophieContemporaine'. * Shortly before the arrival of Mr. And Mrs. Browningin Paris, he had accidentally seen an extract from 'Paracelsus'. Thisstruck him so much that he procured the two volumes of the works and'Christmas Eve', and discussed the whole in the 'Revue' as the secondpart of an essay entitled 'La Poesie Anglaise depuis Byron'. Mr. Browning saw the article, and was naturally touched at finding his poemsthe object of serious study in a foreign country, while still so littleregarded in his own. It was no less natural that this should lead toa friendship which, the opening once given, would have grown upunassisted, at least on Mr. Browning's side; for M. Milsand united thequalities of a critical intellect with a tenderness, a loyalty, and asimplicity of nature seldom found in combination with them. 

 * He published also an admirable little work on the requirements of secondary education in France, equally applicable in many respects to any country and to any time. 

The introduction was brought about by the daughter of William Browning, Mrs. Jebb-Dyke, or more directly by Mr. And Mrs. Fraser Corkran, whowere among the earliest friends of the Browning family in Paris. M. Milsand was soon an 'habitue' of Mr. Browning's house, as somewhat laterof that of his father and sister; and when, many years afterwards, MissBrowning had taken up her abode in England, he spent some weeks of theearly summer in Warwick Crescent, whenever his home duties or personaloccupations allowed him to do so. Several times also the poet and hissister joined him at Saint-Aubin, the seaside village in Normandy whichwas his special resort, and where they enjoyed the good offices ofMadame Milsand, a home-staying, genuine French wife and mother, wellacquainted with the resources of its very primitive life. M. Milsanddied, in 1886, of apoplexy, the consequence, I believe, of heart-diseasebrought on by excessive cold-bathing. The first reprint of 'Sordello', in 1863, had been, as is well known, dedicated to him. The 'Parleyings', published within a year of his death, were inscribed to his memory. Mr. Browning's affection for him finds utterance in a few strong words whichI shall have occasion to quote. An undated fragment concerning him fromMrs. Browning to her sister-in-law, points to a later date than thepresent, but may as well be inserted here. 

'. . . I quite love M. Milsand for being interested in Penini. What aperfect creature he is, to be sure! He always stands in the top placeamong our gods--Give him my cordial regards, always, mind. . . . He wants, I think--the only want of that noble nature--the sense ofspiritual relation; and also he puts under his feet too much the worthof impulse and passion, in considering the powers of human nature. Forthe rest, I don't know such a man. He has intellectual conscience--orsay--the conscience of the intellect, in a higher degree than I eversaw in any man of any country--and this is no less Robert's belief thanmine. When we hear the brilliant talkers and noisy thinkers here andthere and everywhere, we go back to Milsand with a real reverence. Also, I never shall forget his delicacy to me personally, nor his tendernessof heart about my child. . . . '

The criticism was inevitable from the point of view of Mrs. Browning'snature and experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it ifshe had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never have agreed withher as to the authority of 'impulse and passion', but I am sure he didnot underrate their importance as factors in human life. 

M. Milsand was one of the few readers of Browning with whom I havetalked about him, who had studied his work from the beginning, and hadrealized the ambition of his first imaginative flights. He wasmore perplexed by the poet's utterance in later years. 'Quel hommeextraordinaire!' he once said to me; 'son centre n'est pas au milieu. 'The usual criticism would have been that, while his own centre was inthe middle, he did not seek it in the middle for the things of whichhe wrote; but I remember that, at the moment in which the words werespoken, they impressed me as full of penetration. Mr. Browning had somuch confidence in M. Milsand's linguistic powers that he invariablysent him his proof-sheets for final revision, and was exceedinglypleased with such few corrections as his friend was able to suggest. 

With the name of Milsand connects itself in the poet's life that of ayounger, but very genuine friend of both, M. Gustave Dourlans: a man offine critical and intellectual powers, unfortunately neutralized by badhealth. M. Dourlans also became a visitor at Warwick Crescent, and afrequent correspondent of Mr. Or rather of Miss Browning. He came fromParis once more, to witness the last sad scene in Westminster Abbey. 

The first three years of Mr. Browning's married life had beenunproductive from a literary point of view. The realization andenjoyment of the new companionship, the duties as well as interestsof the dual existence, and, lastly, the shock and pain of his mother'sdeath, had absorbed his mental energies for the time being. But by theclose of 1848 he had prepared for publication in the following year anew edition of 'Paracelsus' and the 'Bells and Pomegranates' poems. Thereprint was in two volumes, and the publishers were Messrs. Chapman andHall; the system, maintained through Mr. Moxon, of publication at theauthor's expense, being abandoned by Mr. Browning when he left home. Mrs. Browning writes of him on this occasion that he is paying 'peculiarattention to the objections made against certain obscurities. ' Hehimself prefaced the edition by these words: 'Many of these pieces wereout of print, the rest had been withdrawn from circulation, when thecorrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was prepared. Thevarious Poems and Dramas have received the author's most carefulrevision. December 1848. '

In 1850, in Florence, he wrote 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; andin December 1851, in Paris, the essay on Shelley, to be prefixed totwenty-five supposed letters of that poet, published by Moxon in 1852. *

 * They were discovered, not long afterwards, to be spurious, and the book suppressed. 

The reading of this Essay might serve to correct the frequentmisapprehension of Mr. Browning's religious views which has beenbased on the literal evidence of 'Christmas Eve', were it not that itscompanion poem has failed to do so; though the tendency of 'Easter Day'is as different from that of its precursor as their common Christianityadmits. The balance of argument in 'Christmas Eve' is in favour ofdirect revelation of religious truth and prosaic certainty regarding it;while the 'Easter Day' vision makes a tentative and unresting attitudethe first condition of the religious life; and if Mr. Browning has meantto say--as he so often did say--that religious certainties are requiredfor the undeveloped mind, but that the growing religious intelligencewalks best by a receding light, he denies the positive basis ofChristian belief, and is no more orthodox in the one set of reflectionsthan in the other. The spirit, however, of both poems is ascetic: forthe first divorces religious worship from every appeal to the poeticsense; the second refuses to recognize, in poetry or art, or theattainments of the intellect, or even in the best human love, anypractical correspondence with religion. The dissertation on Shelley is, what 'Sordello' was, what its author's treatment of poets and poetryalways must be--an indirect vindication of the conceptions of human lifewhich 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day' condemns. This double poem standsindeed so much alone in Mr. Browning's work that we are tempted to askourselves to what circumstance or impulse, external or internal, it hasbeen due; and we can only conjecture that the prolonged communion witha mind so spiritual as that of his wife, the special sympathies anddifferences which were elicited by it, may have quickened his religiousimagination, while directing it towards doctrinal or controversialissues which it had not previously embraced. 

The 'Essay' is a tribute to the genius of Shelley; it is also ajustification of his life and character, as the balance of evidence thenpresented them to Mr. Browning's mind. It rests on a definition of therespective qualities of the objective and the subjective poet. . . . While both, he says, are gifted with the fuller perception of nature andman, the one endeavours to

'reproduce things external (whether the phenomena of the scenicuniverse, or the manifested action of the human heart and brain) with animmediate reference, in every case, to the common eye and apprehensionof his fellow-men, assumed capable of receiving and profiting by thisreproduction'--the other 'is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolutetruth, --an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, bythe poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees--the 'Ideas'of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand--it istoward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity inaction, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and hedigs where he stands, --preferring to seek them in his own soul as thenearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions ofwhich he desires to perceive and speak. '

The objective poet is therefore a fashioner, the subjective is bestdescribed as a seer. The distinction repeats itself in the interest withwhich we study their respective lives. We are glad of the biography ofthe objective poet because it reveals to us the power by which he works;we desire still more that of the subjective poet, because it presents uswith another aspect of the work itself. The poetry of such a one is aneffluence much more than a production; it is

'the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it butnot separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarilyapproach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it we apprehendhim, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. '

The reason of Mr. Browning's prolonged and instinctive reverencefor Shelley is thus set forth in the opening pages of the Essay: herecognized in his writings the quality of a 'subjective' poet; hence, ashe understands the word, the evidence of a divinely inspired man. 

Mr. Browning goes on to say that we need the recorded life in orderquite to determine to which class of inspiration a given work belongs;and though he regards the work of Shelley as carrying its warrant withinitself, his position leaves ample room for a withdrawal of faith, areversal of judgment, if the ascertained facts of the poet's life shouldat any future time bear decided witness against him. He is also carefulto avoid drawing too hard and fast a line between the two opposite kindsof poet. He admits that a pure instance of either is seldom to be found;he sees no reason why

'these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter from the samepoet in successive perfect works. . . . A mere running-in of the onefaculty upon the other' being, meanwhile, 'the ordinary circumstance. '

I venture, however, to think, that in his various and necessaryconcessions, he lets slip the main point; and for the simple reason thatit is untenable. The terms 'subjective' and 'objective' denote a realand very important difference on the ground of judgment, but onewhich tends more and more to efface itself in the sphere of the highercreative imagination. Mr. Browning might as briefly, and I think morefully, have expressed the salient quality of his poet, even while hecould describe it in these emphatic words:

'I pass at once, therefore, from Shelley's minor excellencies to hisnoblest and predominating characteristic. 

'This I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in theabsolute, and of Beauty and Good in the concrete, while he throws, fromhis poet's station between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerousfilms for the connexion of each with each, than have been thrown by anymodern artificer of whom I have knowledge . . . I would rather considerShelley's poetry as a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentmentof the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to thespiritual, and of the actual to the ideal than . . . '

This essay has, in common with the poems of the preceding years, theone quality of a largely religious and, in a certain sense, Christianspirit, and in this respect it falls naturally into the general seriesof its author's works. The assertion of Platonic ideas suggests, however, a mood of spiritual thought for which the reference in'Pauline' has been our only, and a scarcely sufficient preparation; norcould the most definite theism to be extracted from Platonic beliefsever satisfy the human aspirations which, in a nature like that ofRobert Browning, culminate in the idea of God. The metaphysical aspectof the poet's genius here distinctly reappears for the first time since'Sordello', and also for the last. It becomes merged in the simplerforms of the religious imagination. 

The justification of the man Shelley, to which great part of the Essayis devoted, contains little that would seem new to his more recentapologists; little also which to the writer's later judgments continuedto recommend itself as true. It was as a great poetic artist, not as agreat poet, that the author of 'Prometheus' and 'The Cenci', of 'Julianand Maddalo', and 'Epipsychidion' was finally to rank in Mr. Browning'smind. The whole remains nevertheless a memorial of a very touchingaffection; and whatever intrinsic value the Essay may possess, its maininterest must always be biographical. Its motive and inspiration are setforth in the closing lines:

'It is because I have long held these opinions in assurance andgratitude, that I catch at the opportunity offered to me of expressingthem here; knowing that the alacrity to fulfil an humble office conveysmore love than the acceptance of the honour of a higher one, and thatbetter, therefore, than the signal service it was the dream of myboyhood to render to his fame and memory, may be the saying of a few, inadequate words upon these scarcely more important supplementaryletters of _Shelley_. '

If Mr. Browning had seen reason to doubt the genuineness of the lettersin question, his Introduction could not have been written. That, whilereceiving them as genuine, he thought them unimportant, gave it, as hejustly discerned, its full significance. 

Mr. And Mrs. Browning returned to London for the summer of 1852, and wehave a glimpse of them there in a letter from Mr. Fox to his daughter. 

July 16, '52. 

'. . . I had a charming hour with the Brownings yesterday; morefascinated with her than ever. She talked lots of George Sand, and sobeautifully. Moreover she silver-electroplated Louis Napoleon!! They arelodging at 58 Welbeck Street; the house has a queer name on the door, and belongs to some Belgian family. 

'They came in late one night, and R. B. Says that in the morningtwilight he saw three portraits on the bedroom wall, and speculated whothey might be. Light gradually showed the first, Beatrice Cenci, "Good!"said he; "in a poetic region. " More light: the second, Lord Byron! Whocan the third be? And what think you it was, but your sketch (engravedchalk portrait) of me? He made quite a poem and picture of the affair. 

'She seems much better; did not put her hand before her mouth, which Itook as a compliment: and the young Florentine was gracious . . . '

It need hardly be said that this valued friend was one of the first whomMr. Browning introduced to his wife, and that she responded with readywarmth to his claims on her gratitude and regard. More than one jointletter from herself and her husband commemorates this new phase of theintimacy; one especially interesting was written from Florence in 1858, in answer to the announcement by Mr. Fox of his election for Oldham; andMr. Browning's contribution, which is very characteristic, will appearin due course. 

Either this or the preceding summer brought Mr. Browning for the firsttime into personal contact with an early lover of his works: Mr. D. G. Rossetti. They had exchanged letters a year or two before, on thesubject of 'Pauline', which Rossetti (as I have already mentioned) hadread in ignorance of its origin, but with the conviction that only theauthor of 'Paracelsus' could have produced it. He wrote to Mr. Browningto ascertain the fact, and to tell him he had admired the poem so muchas to transcribe it whole from the British Museum copy. He now calledon him with Mr. William Allingham; and doubly recommended himself to thepoet's interest by telling him that he was a painter. When Mr. Browningwas again in London, in 1855, Rossetti began painting his portrait, which he finished in Paris in the ensuing winter. 

The winter of 1852-3 saw the family once more in Florence, and at CasaGuidi, where the routine of quiet days was resumed. Mrs. Browninghas spoken in more than one of her letters of the comparative socialseclusion in which she and her husband had elected to live. Thisseclusion was much modified in later years, and many well-known Englishand American names become associated with their daily life. It referredindeed almost entirely to their residence in Florence, where they foundless inducement to enter into society than in London, Paris, and Rome. But it is on record that during the fifteen years of his married life, Mr. Browning never dined away from home, except on one occasion--anexception proving the rule; and we cannot therefore be surprised thathe should subsequently have carried into the experience of an unshackledand very interesting social intercourse, a kind of freshness which a manof fifty has not generally preserved. 

The one excitement which presented itself in the early months of 1853was the production of 'Colombe's Birthday'. The first allusion to thiscomes to us in a letter from the poet to Lady, then Mrs. Theodore, Martin, from which I quote a few passages. 

Florence: Jan. 31, '53. 

'My dear Mrs. Martin, --. . . Be assured that I, for my part, havebeen in no danger of forgetting my promises any more than yourperformances--which were admirable of all kinds. I shall be delighted ifyou can do anything for "Colombe"--do what you think best with it, andfor me--it will be pleasant to be in such hands--only, pray followthe corrections in the last edition--(Chapman and Hall will give you acopy)--as they are important to the sense. As for the condensation intothree acts--I shall leave that, and all cuttings and the like, to yourown judgment--and, come what will, I shall have to be grateful to you, as before. For the rest, you will play the part to heart's content, I_know_. . . . And how good it will be to see you again, and make my wifesee you too--she who "never saw a great actress" she says--unless it wasDejazet! . . . '

Mrs. Browning writes about the performance, April 12:

'. . . I am beginning to be anxious about 'Colombe's Birthday'. I caremuch more about it than Robert does. He says that no one will mistake itfor his speculation; it's Mr. Buckstone's affair altogether. True--but Ishould like it to succeed, being Robert's play, notwithstanding. But theplay is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous aboutit. On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know, --and whatin the world made them select it, if it is not likely to answer theirpurpose? By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been"prepared for the stage by the author. " Don't believe a word of it. Robert just said "yes" when they wrote to ask him, and not a lineof communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his newedition, and that was the whole. . . . '

She communicates the result in May:

'. . . Yes, Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for aplay of that kind. It was a "succes d'estime" and something more, whichis surprising perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. MissFaucit was alone in doing us justice. . . . '

Mrs. Browning did see 'Miss Faucit' on her next visit to England. Sheagreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone, one morning, at her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half. The onlyperson who had 'done justice' to 'Colombe' besides contributing towhatever success her husband's earlier plays had obtained, was much morethan 'a great actress' to Mrs. Browning's mind; and we may imagineit would have gone hard with her before she renounced the pleasure ofmaking her acquaintance. 

Two letters, dated from the Baths of Lucca, July 15 and August 20, '53, tell how and where the ensuing summer was passed, besides introducingus, for the first time, to Mr. And Mrs. William Story, between whosefamily and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was everafterwards to subsist. 

July 15. 

'. . . We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a littleholy fear of the company there--but the scenery, and the coolness, andconvenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for threemonths or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve ofnot calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we werethere four years ago just after the birth of our child. The mountainsare wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing somework. 

'Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with itthe idea of home. . . . '

Casa Tolomei, Alta Villa, Bagni di Lucca: Aug. 20. 

'. . . We are enjoying the mountains here--riding the donkeys in thefootsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful. The strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer, throughgrowing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled inthe forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, and thepeasants sell them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends Mr. AndMrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son ofJudge Story, the biographer of his father, and for himself, sculptor andpoet--and she a sympathetic graceful woman, fresh and innocent inface and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at oneanother's houses. 

'. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion toa village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling downvarious precipices--but the scenery was exquisite--past speaking of forbeauty. Oh, those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamitebeasts and setting their teeth against the sky--it was wonderful. . . . '

Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was 'In a Balcony'; also, probably, some of the 'Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration in'By the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge to whichhe walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr. , now Lord, Lytton, wasalso an incident of this summer. 

The next three letters from which I am able to quote, describe theimpressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome. 

Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 30 piano. Jan. 18, 54. 

'. . . Well, we are all well to begin with--and have been well--ourtroubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journeyof eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monasteryand triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way--thatpassion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In thehighest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually--forthe child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air andscene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys--howthey and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly atthe Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so thatwe arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, --andwe had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morningbefore breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservantwith a message, "the boy was in convulsions--there was danger. " Wehurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true!All that first day we spent beside a death-bed; for the child neverrallied--never opened his eyes in consciousness--and by eight in theevening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at ourhouse--could not be moved, said the physicians . . . Gastric fever, with a tendency to the brain--and within two days her life was almostdespaired of--exactly the same malady as her brother's. . . . Also theEnglish nurse was apparently dying at the Story's house, and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease. 

'. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once that thethree patients recovered--only in poor little Edith's case Romanfever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since in periodicalrecurrence. She is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous tolife, but it is exhausting. . . . Now you will understand what ghostlyflakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day bya death-bed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joeis laid close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph)and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in thecarriage together--I am horribly weak about such things--I can't lookon the earth-side of death--I flinch from corpses and graves, and nevermeet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwardsI look _over_ death, and upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So thatit was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which thepoor stricken mother sat so calmly--not to drop from the seat. Well--allthis has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars in theold strain of thought--the antique words get muddled and blurred withwarm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. Romeis spoilt to me--there's the truth. Still, one lives through one'sassociations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoyingsome things--the climate, for instance, which, though pernicious to thegeneral health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the bluesky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins.. . . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and dowork and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, hear excellentmusic at Mrs. Sartoris's (A. K. ) once or twice a week, and have FannyKemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly. 

'If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust swept outof salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides! . . . '

Rome: March 29. 

'. . . We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, especially Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hairand radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic, unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought andconvention--but noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. Shethinks me credulous and full of dreams--but does not despise me forthat reason--which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for Ishould not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial andgenerous--her milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy familyrelations, which poor Fanny Kemble's has not had. Mrs. Sartoris' househas the best society in Rome--and exquisite music of course. We metLockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him--more than Ido--because of the access of cold weather lately which has kept me athome chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside, on a day's excursion withhim and the Sartorises--and I hear found favour in his sight. Said thecritic, "I like Browning--he isn't at all like a damned literary man. "That's a compliment, I believe, according to your dictionary. It made melaugh and think of you directly. . . . Robert has been sitting for hispicture to Mr. Fisher, the English artist who painted Mr. Kenyon andLandor. You remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house in London. Well, he has painted Robert's, and it is an admirable likeness. Theexpression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic. . . . '

May 19. 

'. . . To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don'tpretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome, awatering-place written over the antique, and I haven't taken to it as apoet should I suppose. And let us speak the truth above all things. Iam strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the placehave not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child, thelight of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him. . . . The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the twosisters, who are charming and excellent both of them, in different ways, and certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna, upon picnic excursions--they, and certain of their friends; forinstance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, who is wittyand agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, who is an agreeableman, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost toobrilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirelywith the mayonnaise and champagne. . . . '

It must have been on one of the excursions here described that anincident took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristiccomments in a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnicparty had strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was notstrong enough to join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, stayed with her; which act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble toexclaim that he was the only man she had ever known who behaved like aChristian to his wife. She was, when he wrote this letter, reading hisworks for the first time, and had expressed admiration for them; but, hecontinued, none of the kind things she said to him on that subject couldmove him as did those words in the Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would havemodified her statement in later years, for the sake of one English andone American husband now closely related to her. Even then, perhaps, shedid not make it without inward reserve. But she will forgive me, I amsure, for having repeated it. 

Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, andsays: 'I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener thanis set down, but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked herextremely. '

Another of Mrs. Browning's letters is written from Florence, June 6('54):

'. . . We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then gonorthward. I love Florence--the place looks exquisitely beautiful inits garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by thenightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for aplace to live in--cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within thelimits of civilization yet out of the crush of it. . . . We have spenttwo delicious evenings at villas outside the gates, one with youngLytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think. I like him. . . We both do . . . From the bottom of our hearts. Then, our friend, Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again. 

. . . . . 

'. . . Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most ofher time with us . . . Singing passionately and talking eloquently. Sheis really charming. . . . '

I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of thewinter of 1854-5. In all probability Mr. And Mrs. Browning remained in, or as near as possible to, Florence, since their income was still toolimited for continuous travelling. They possibly talked of going toEngland, but postponed it till the following year; we know that theywent there in 1855, taking his sister with them as they passed throughParis. They did not this time take lodgings for the summer months, but hired a house at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square; and there, onSeptember 27, Tennyson read his new poem, 'Maud', to Mrs. Browning, while Rossetti, the only other person present besides the family, privately drew his likeness in pen and ink. The likeness has become wellknown; the unconscious sitter must also, by this time, be acquaintedwith it; but Miss Browning thinks no one except herself, who was nearRossetti at the table, was at the moment aware of its being made. Alleyes must have been turned towards Tennyson, seated by his hostess onthe sofa. Miss Arabel Barrett was also of the party. 

Some interesting words of Mrs. Browning's carry their date in theallusion to Mr. Ruskin; but I cannot ascertain it more precisely:

'We went to Denmark Hill yesterday to have luncheon with them, and seethe Turners, which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, andso does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest, --refined and truthful. I likehim very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances madethis year in England. '

Chapter 12

1855-1858

'Men and Women'--'Karshook'--'Two in the Campagna'--Winter inParis; Lady Elgin--'Aurora Leigh'--Death of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett--Penini--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Browning--TheFlorentine Carnival--Baths of Lucca--Spiritualism--Mr. Kirkup; CountGinnasi--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox--Havre. 

The beautiful 'One Word More' was dated from London in September; andthe fifty poems gathered together under the title of 'Men and Women'were published before the close of the year, in two volumes, by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. * They are all familiar friends to Mr. Browning'sreaders, in their first arrangement and appearance, as in laterredistributions and reprints; but one curious little fact concerningthem is perhaps not generally known. In the eighth line of thefourteenth section of 'One Word More' they were made to include'Karshook (Ben Karshook's Wisdom)', which never was placed amongst them. It was written in April 1854; and the dedication of the volume must havebeen, as it so easily might be, in existence, before the author decidedto omit it. The wrong name, once given, was retained, I have no doubt, from preference for its terminal sound; and 'Karshook' only became'Karshish' in the Tauchnitz copy of 1872, and in the English edition of1889. 

 * The date is given in the edition of 1868 as London 185-; in the Tauchnitz selection of 1872, London and Florence 184- and 185-; in the new English edition 184-and 185-. 

'Karshook' appeared in 1856 in 'The Keepsake', edited by Miss Power;but, as we are told on good authority, has been printed in no edition orselection of the Poet's works. I am therefore justified in inserting ithere. 

 I

 'Would a man 'scape the rod?' Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, 'See that he turn to God The day before his death. '

 'Ay, could a man inquire When it shall come!' I say. The Rabbi's eye shoots fire-- 'Then let him turn to-day!'

 II

 Quoth a young Sadducee: 'Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain we Have, as they tell us, souls?'

 'Son, there is no reply!' The Rabbi bit his beard: 'Certain, a soul have _I_-- _We_ may have none, ' he sneer'd. 

 Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, The Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And struck the simple, solemn. 

Among this first collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called'Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of arestless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened andperplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that shouldimpress one as more purely dramatic ever fell from Mr. Browning'spen. We are told, nevertheless, in Mr. Sharp's 'Life', that a personalcharacter no less actual than that of the 'Guardian Angel' has beenclaimed for it. The writer, with characteristic delicacy, evades alldiscussion of the question; but he concedes a great deal in his mannerof doing so. The poem, he says, conveys a sense of that necessaryisolation of the individual soul which resists the fusing power ofthe deepest love; and its meaning cannot be personally--because it isuniversally--true. I do not think Mr. Browning meant to emphasize thisaspect of the mystery of individual life, though the poem, in a certainsense, expresses it. We have no reason to believe that he ever acceptedit as constant; and in no case could he have intended to refer itsconditions to himself. He was often isolated by the processes of hismind; but there was in him no barrier to that larger emotional sympathywhich we think of as sympathy of the soul. If this poem were true, 'OneWord More' would be false, quite otherwise than in that approach toexaggeration which is incidental to the poetic form. The true keynoteof 'Two in the Campagna' is the pain of perpetual change, and of theconscious, though unexplained, predestination to it. Mr. Browning couldhave still less in common with such a state, since one of the qualitiesfor which he was most conspicuous was the enormous power of anchoragewhich his affections possessed. Only length of time and variety ofexperience could fully test this power or fully display it; but thesigns of it had not been absent from even his earliest life. He lovedfewer people in youth than in advancing age: nature and circumstancecombined to widen the range, and vary the character of his humaninterests; but where once love or friendship had struck a root, only amoral convulsion could avail to dislodge it. I make no deduction fromthis statement when I admit that the last and most emphatic words of thepoem in question, Only I discern-- Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn, did probably come from the poet's heart, as they also found a deep echoin that of his wife, who much loved them. 

From London they returned to Paris for the winter of 1855-6. The youngerof the Kemble sisters, Mrs. Sartoris, was also there with her family;and the pleasant meetings of the Campagna renewed themselves for Mr. Browning, though in a different form. He was also, with his sister, a constant visitor at Lady Elgin's. Both they and Mrs. Browning weregreatly attached to her, and she warmly reciprocated the feeling. As Mr. Locker's letter has told us, Mr. Browning was in the habit of readingpoetry to her, and when his sister had to announce his arrival fromItaly or England, she would say: 'Robert is coming to nurse you, andread to you. ' Lady Elgin was by this time almost completely paralyzed. She had lost the power of speech, and could only acknowledge the littleattentions which were paid to her by some graceful pathetic gesture ofthe left hand; but she retained her sensibilities to the last; and MissBrowning received on one occasion a serious lesson in the risk of everassuming that the appearance of unconsciousness guarantees its reality. Lady Augusta Bruce had asked her, in her mother's presence, how Mrs. Browning was; and, imagining that Lady Elgin was unable to hear orunderstand, she had answered with incautious distinctness, 'I am afraidshe is very ill, ' when a little sob from the invalid warned her of hermistake. Lady Augusta quickly repaired it by rejoining, 'but she isbetter than she was, is she not?' Miss Browning of course assented. 

There were other friends, old and new, whom Mr. Browning occasionallysaw, including, I need hardly say, the celebrated Madame Mohl. In themain, however, he led a quiet life, putting aside many inducements toleave his home. 

Mrs. Browning was then writing 'Aurora Leigh', and her husband must havebeen more than ever impressed by her power of work, as displayed by hermanner of working. To him, as to most creative writers, perfect quietwas indispensable to literary production. She wrote in pencil, onscraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room, open tointerruption from chance visitors, or from her little omnipresent son;simply hiding the paper beside her if anyone came in, and taking itup again when she was free. And if this process was conceivable in thelarge, comparatively silent spaces of their Italian home, and amidsthabits of life which reserved social intercourse for the close of theworking day, it baffles belief when one thinks of it as carried onin the conditions of a Parisian winter, and the little 'salon' of theapartment in the Rue du Colisee in which those months were spent. Thepoem was completed in the ensuing summer, in Mr. Kenyon's London house, and dedicated, October 17, in deeply pathetic words to that faithfulfriend, whom the writer was never to see again. 

The news of his death, which took place in December 1856, reached Mr. And Mrs. Browning in Florence, to be followed in the spring by that ofMrs. Browning's father. Husband and wife had both determined to foregoany pecuniary benefit which might accrue to them from this event; butthey were not called upon to exercise their powers of renunciation. ByMr. Kenyon's will they were the richer, as is now, I think, generallyknown, the one by six thousand, the other by four thousand guineas. * Ofthat cousin's long kindness Mrs. Browning could scarcely in after-daystrust herself to speak. It was difficult to her, she said, even to writehis name without tears. 

 * Mr. Kenyon had considerable wealth, derived, like Mr. Barrett's, from West Indian estates. 

I have alluded, perhaps tardily, to Mr. Browning's son, a sociablelittle being who must for some time have been playing a prominent partin his parents' lives. I saw him for the first time in this winter of1855-6, and remember the grave expression of the little round face, the outline of which was common, at all events in childhood, to all themembers of his mother's family, and was conspicuous in her, if we maytrust an early portrait which has recently come to light. He wore thecurling hair to which she refers in a later letter, and pretty frocksand frills, in which she delighted to clothe him. It is on record that, on one of the journeys of this year, a trunk was temporarily lost whichcontained Peni's embroidered trousers, and the MS. , whole or in part, of'Aurora Leigh'; and that Mrs. Browning had scarcely a thought to sparefor her poem, in face of the damage to her little boy's appearance whichthe accident involved. 

How he came by his familiar name of Penini--hence Peni, and Pen--neithersignifies in itself, nor has much bearing on his father's familyhistory; but I cannot refrain from a word of comment on Mr. Hawthorne'sfantastic conjecture, which has been asserted and reasserted inopposition to Mr. Browning's own statement of the case. According to Mr. Hawthorne, the name was derived from Apennino, and bestowed on the childin babyhood, because Apennino was a colossal statue, and he was so verysmall. It would be strange indeed that any joke connecting 'Baby' with agiven colossal statue should have found its way into the family withoutfather, mother, or nurse being aware of it; or that any joke should havebeen accepted there which implied that the little boy was not of normalsize. But the fact is still more unanswerable that Apennino could by noprocess congenial to the Italian language be converted into Penini. Its inevitable abbreviation would be Pennino with a distinct separatesounding of the central n's, or Nino. The accentuation of Penini is alsodistinctly German. 

During this winter in Paris, little Wiedemann, as his parents tried tocall him--his full name was Robert Wiedemann Barrett--had developed adecided turn for blank verse. He would extemporize short poems, singingthem to his mother, who wrote them down as he sang. There is no lessproof of his having possessed a talent for music, though it firstnaturally showed itself in the love of a cheerful noise. His father hadonce sat down to the piano, for a serious study of some piece, whenthe little boy appeared, with the evident intention of joining in theperformance. Mr. Browning rose precipitately, and was about to leave theroom. 'Oh!' exclaimed the hurt mother, 'you are going away, and hehas brought his three drums to accompany you upon. ' She herself wouldundoubtedly have endured the mixed melody for a little time, though herhusband did not think she seriously wished him to do so. But if he didnot play the piano to the accompaniment of Pen's drums, he played pianoduets with him as soon as the boy was old enough to take part in them;and devoted himself to his instruction in this, as in other and moreimportant branches of knowledge. 

Peni had also his dumb companions, as his father had had before him. Tortoises lived at one end of the famous balcony at Casa Guidi; andwhen the family were at the Baths of Lucca, Mr. Browning would stow awaylittle snakes in his bosom, and produce them for the child's amusement. As the child grew into a man, the love of animals which he had inheritedbecame conspicuous in him; and it gave rise to many amusing and somepathetic little episodes of his artist life. The creatures which hegathered about him were generally, I think, more highly organized thanthose which elicited his father's peculiar tenderness; it was naturalthat he should exact more pictorial or more companionable qualities fromthem. But father and son concurred in the fondness for snakes, and in asingular predilection for owls; and they had not been long establishedin Warwick Crescent, when a bird of that family was domesticated there. We shall hear of it in a letter from Mr. Browning. 

Of his son's moral quality as quite a little child his father has toldme pretty and very distinctive stories, but they would be out of placehere. *

 * I am induced, on second thoughts, to subjoin one of these, for its testimony to the moral atmosphere into which the child had been born. He was sometimes allowed to play with a little boy not of his own class--perhaps the son of a 'contadino'. The child was unobjectionable, or neither Penini nor his parents would have endured the association; but the servants once thought themselves justified in treating him cavalierly, and Pen flew indignant to his mother, to complain of their behaviour. Mrs. Browning at once sought little Alessandro, with kind words and a large piece of cake; but this, in Pen's eyes, only aggravated the offence; it was a direct reflection on his visitor's quality. 'He doesn't tome for take, ' he burst forth; 'he tomes because he is my friend. ' How often, since I heard this first, have we repeated the words, 'he doesn't tome for take, ' in half-serious definition of a disinterested person or act! They became a standing joke. 

Mrs. Browning seems now to have adopted the plan of writing independentletters to her sister-in-law; and those available for our purpose areespecially interesting. The buoyancy of tone which has habituallymarked her communications, but which failed during the winter in Rome, reasserts itself in the following extract. Her maternal comments on Peniand his perfections have hitherto been so carefully excluded, that abrief allusion to him may be allowed on the present occasion. 

1857. 

'My dearest Sarianna, . . . Here is Penini's letter, which takes upso much room that I must be sparing of mine--and, by the way, if youconsider him improved in his writing, give the praise to Robert, whohas been taking most patient pains with him indeed. You will see howthe little curly head is turned with carnival doings. So gay a carnivalnever was in our experience, for until last year (when we were absent)all masks had been prohibited, and now everybody has eaten of the treeof good and evil till not an apple is left. Peni persecuted me to lethim have a domino--with tears and embraces--he "_almost never_ in all hislife had had a domino, " and he would like it so. Not a black domino!no--he hated black--but a blue domino, trimmed with pink! that was histaste. The pink trimming I coaxed him out of, but for the rest, I lethim have his way. . . . For my part, the universal madness reached mesitting by the fire (whence I had not stirred for three months), and youwill open your eyes when I tell you that I went (in domino and masked)to the great opera-ball. Yes! I did, really. Robert, who had beeninvited two or three times to other people's boxes, had proposed toreturn their kindness by taking a box himself at the opera this night, and entertaining two or three friends with galantine and champagne. Justas he and I were lamenting the impossibility of my going, on that verymorning the wind changed, the air grew soft and mild, and he maintainedthat I might and should go. There was no time to get a domino of myown (Robert himself had a beautiful one made, and I am having itmetamorphosed into a black silk gown for myself!) so I sent out andhired one, buying the mask. And very much amused I was. I like to seethese characteristic things. (I shall never rest, Sarianna, till I riskmy reputation at the 'bal de l'opera' at Paris). Do you think I wassatisfied with staying in the box? No, indeed. Down I went, and Robertand I elbowed our way through the crowd to the remotest corner ofthe ball below. Somebody smote me on the shoulder and cried "BellaMascherina!" and I answered as impudently as one feels under a mask. At two o'clock in the morning, however, I had to give up and come away(being overcome by the heavy air) and ingloriously left Robert andour friends to follow at half-past four. Think of the refinement andgentleness--yes, I must call it _superiority_ of this people--when noexcess, no quarrelling, no rudeness nor coarseness can be observed inthe course of such wild masked liberty; not a touch of licence anywhere, and perfect social equality! Our servant Ferdinando side by side in thesame ball-room with the Grand Duke, and no class's delicacy offendedagainst! For the Grand Duke went down into the ball-room for a shorttime. . . . '

The summer of 1857 saw the family once more at the Baths of Lucca, andagain in company with Mr. Lytton. He had fallen ill at the houseof their common friend, Miss Blagden, also a visitor there; and Mr. Browning shared in the nursing, of which she refused to entrust any partto less friendly hands. He sat up with the invalid for four nights; andwould doubtless have done so for as many more as seemed necessary, butthat Mrs. Browning protested against this trifling with his own health. 

The only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning andhis wife referred to the subject of spiritualism. Mrs. Browning helddoctrines which prepared her to accept any real or imagined phenomenabetokening intercourse with the spirits of the dead; nor could shebe repelled by anything grotesque or trivial in the manner of thisintercourse, because it was no part of her belief that a spirit stillinhabiting the atmosphere of our earth, should exhibit any dignity orsolemnity not belonging to him while he lived upon it. The question musthave been discussed by them on its general grounds at a very early stageof their intimacy; but it only assumed practical importance when Mr. Home came to Florence in 1857 or 1858. Mr. Browning found himselfcompelled to witness some of the 'manifestations'. He was keenlyalive to their generally prosaic and irreverent character, and to theappearance of jugglery which was then involved in them. He absolutelydenied the good faith of all the persons concerned. Mrs. Browning asabsolutely believed it; and no compromise between them was attainable, because, strangely enough, neither of them admitted as possible thatmediums or witnesses should deceive themselves. The personal aspectwhich the question thus received brought it into closer and more painfulcontact with their daily life. They might agree to differ as to theabstract merits of spiritualism; but Mr. Browning could not resignhimself to his wife's trustful attitude towards some of the individualswho at that moment represented it. He may have had no substantial fearof her doing anything that could place her in their power, though avague dread of this seems to have haunted him; but he chafed against thepublic association of her name with theirs. Both his love for and hispride in her resented it. 

He had subsided into a more judicial frame of mind when he wrote 'Sludgethe Medium', in which he says everything which can excuse the liar and, what is still more remarkable, modify the lie. So far back as the autumnof 1860 I heard him discuss the trickery which he believed himself tohave witnessed, as dispassionately as any other non-credulous personmight have done so. The experience must even before that have passedout of the foreground of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, subject, for many years, to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which wouldsweep over him whenever the question of 'spirits' or 'spiritualism' wasrevived; and we can only understand this in connection with the peculiarcircumstances of the case. With all his faith in the future, with allhis constancy to the past, the memory of pain was stronger in him thanany other. A single discordant note in the harmony of that married love, though merged in its actual existence, would send intolerable vibrationsthrough his remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in thisinstance, that of simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. Browning's refusal to admit that disagreement was possible. She neverbelieved in her husband's disbelief; and he had been not unreasonablyannoyed by her always assuming it to be feigned. But his doubt ofspiritualistic sincerity was not feigned. She cannot have thought, and scarcely can have meant to say so. She may have meant to say, 'Youbelieve that these are tricks, but you know that there is something realbehind them;' and so far, if no farther, she may have been in theright. Mr. Browning never denied the abstract possibility of spiritualcommunication with either living or dead; he only denied that suchcommunication had ever been proved, or that any useful end couldbe subserved by it. The tremendous potentialities of hypnotism andthought-reading, now passing into the region of science, were not thenso remote but that an imagination like his must have foreshadowed them. The natural basis of the seemingly supernatural had not yet entered intodiscussion. He may, from the first, have suspected the existence of somemysterious force, dangerous because not understood, and for this reasondoubly liable to fall into dangerous hands. And if this was so, hewould necessarily regard the whole system of manifestations withan apprehensive hostility, which was not entire negation, but whichrebelled against any effort on the part of others, above all of thosehe loved, to interpret it into assent. The pain and anger which could bearoused in him by an indication on the part of a valued friend of evenan impartial interest in the subject points especially to the latterconclusion. 

He often gave an instance of the tricks played in the name ofspiritualism on credulous persons, which may amuse those who have notyet heard it. I give the story as it survives in the fresher memory ofMr. Val Prinsep, who also received it from Mr. Browning. 

'At Florence lived a curious old savant who in his day was well knownto all who cared for art or history. I fear now few live who recollectKirkup. He was quite a mine of information on all kinds of forgottenlore. It was he who discovered Giotto's portrait of Dante in theBargello. Speaking of some friend, he said, "He is a most ignorantfellow! Why, he does not know how to cast a horoscope!" Of him Browningtold me the following story. Kirkup was much taken up with spiritualism, in which he firmly believed. One day Browning called on him to borrow abook. He rang loudly at the storey, for he knew Kirkup, like Landor, was quite deaf. To his astonishment the door opened at once and Kirkupappeared. 

'"Come in, " he cried; "the spirits told me there was some one at thedoor. Ah! I know you do not believe! Come and see. Mariana is in atrance!"

'Browning entered. In the middle room, full of all kinds of curiousobjects of "vertu", stood a handsome peasant girl, with her eyes fixedas though she were in a trance. 

'"You see, Browning, " said Kirkup, "she is quite insensible, and has nowill of her own. Mariana, hold up your arm. "

'The woman slowly did as she was bid. 

'"She cannot take it down till I tell her, " cried Kirkup. 

'"Very curious, " observed Browning. "Meanwhile I have come to ask you tolend me a book. "

'Kirkup, as soon as he was made to hear what book was wanted, said heshould be delighted. 

'"Wait a bit. It is in the next room. "

'The old man shuffled out at the door. No sooner had he disappeared thanthe woman turned to Browning, winked, and putting down her arm leaned iton his shoulder. When Kirkup returned she resumed her position and rigidlook. 

'"Here is the book, " said Kirkup. "Isn't it wonderful?" he added, pointing to the woman. 

'"Wonderful, " agreed Browning as he left the room. 

'The woman and her family made a good thing of poor Kirkup'sspiritualism. '

Something much more remarkable in reference to this subject happened tothe poet himself during his residence in Florence. It is related in aletter to the 'Spectator', dated January 30, 1869, and signed J. S. K. 

'Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some yearssince, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting atFlorence, was brought to his house without previous introduction, byan intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric andclairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowedscepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other ofhis powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about himthen and there, which he could hand to him, and which was in any waya relic or memento. This Mr. Browning thought was perhaps because hehabitually wore no sort of trinket or ornament, not even a watchguard, and might therefore turn out to be a safe challenge. But it so happenedthat, by a curious accident, he was then wearing under his coat-sleevessome gold wrist-studs which he had quite recently taken into wear, inthe absence (by mistake of a sempstress) of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before worn them in Florence or elsewhere, and had foundthem in some old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One ofthese studs he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his handa while, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning's face, and then he said, as if much impressed, "C'equalche cosa che mi grida nell' orecchio'Uccisione! uccisione!'" ("There is something here which cries out in myear, 'Murder! murder!'")

'"And truly, " says Mr. Browning, "those very studs were taken fromthe dead body of a great uncle of mine who was violently killed on hisestate in St. Kitt's, nearly eighty years ago. . . . The occurrence ofmy great uncle's murder was known only to myself of all men in Florence, as certainly was also my possession of the studs. "'

A letter from the poet, of July 21, 1883, affirms that the account iscorrect in every particular, adding, 'My own explanation of the matterhas been that the shrewd Italian felt his way by the involuntary helpof my own eyes and face. ' The story has been reprinted in the Reports ofthe Psychical Society. 

A pleasant piece of news came to brighten the January of 1858. Mr. Foxwas returned for Oldham, and at once wrote to announce the fact. Hewas answered in a joint letter from Mr. And Mrs. Browning, interestingthroughout, but of which only the second part is quite suited forpresent insertion. 

Mrs. Browning, who writes first and at most length, ends by sayingshe must leave a space for Robert, that Mr. Fox may be compensated forreading all she has had to say. The husband continues as follows:

. . . 'A space for Robert' who has taken a breathing space--hardly morethan enough--to recover from his delight; he won't say surprise, at yourletter, dear Mr. Fox. But it is all right and, like you, I wish from myheart we could get close together again, as in those old days, and whattimes we would have here in Italy! The realization of the children'sprayer of angels at the corner of your bed (i. E. Sofa), one to readand one (my wife) to write, * and both to guard you through the night oflodging-keeper's extortions, abominable charges for firing, and so on. (Observe, to call oneself 'an angel' in this land is rather humble, where they are apt to be painted as plumed cutthroats or celestialpolice--you say of Gabriel at his best and blithesomest, 'Shouldn'tadmire meeting _him_ in a narrow lane!')

 * Mr. Fox much liked to be read to, and was in the habit of writing his articles by dictation. 

I say this foolishly just because I can't trust myself to be earnestabout it. I would, you know, I would, always would, choose you out ofthe whole English world to judge and correct what I write myself; mywife shall read this and let it stand if I have told her so these twelveyears--and certainly I have not grown intellectually an inch over thegood and kind hand you extended over my head how many years ago! Now itgoes over my wife's too. 

How was it Tottie never came here as she promised? Is it to be someother time? Do think of Florence, if ever you feel chilly, and hearquantities about the Princess Royal's marriage, and want a change. Ihate the thought of leaving Italy for one day more than I can help--andsatisfy my English predilections by newspapers and a book or two. One gets nothing of that kind here, but the stuff out of which booksgrow, --it lies about one's feet indeed. Yet for me, there would be onebook better than any now to be got here or elsewhere, and all out of agreat English head and heart, --those 'Memoirs' you engaged to give us. Will you give us them?

Goodbye now--if ever the whim strikes you to 'make beggars happy'remember us. 

Love to Tottie, and love and gratitude to you, dear Mr. Fox, From yoursever affectionately, Robert Browning. 

In the summer of this year, the poet with his wife and child joined hisfather and sister at Havre. It was the last time they were all to betogether. 

Chapter 13

1858-1861

Mrs. Browning's Illness--Siena--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Leighton--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Walter Savage Landor--Winterin Rome--Mr. Val Prinsep--Friends in Rome: Mr. And Mrs. Cartwright--Multiplying Social Relations--Massimo d'Azeglio--Sienaagain--Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister--Mr. Browning'sOccupations--Madame du Quaire--Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death. 

I cannot quite ascertain, though it might seem easy to do so, whetherMr. And Mrs. Browning remained in Florence again till the summer of1859, or whether the intervening months were divided between Florenceand Rome; but some words in their letters favour the latter supposition. We hear of them in September from Mr. Val Prinsep, in Siena or itsneighbourhood; with Mr. And Mrs. Story in an adjacent villa, and WalterSavage Landor in a 'cottage' close by. How Mr. Landor found himselfof the party belongs to a little chapter in Mr. Browning's history forwhich I quote Mr. Colvin's words. * He was then living at Fiesole withhis family, very unhappily, as we all know; and Mr. Colvin relateshow he had thrice left his villa there, determined to live in Florencealone; and each time been brought back to the nominal home where solittle kindness awaited him. 

 * 'Life of Landor', p. 209. 

'. . . The fourth time he presented himself in the house of Mr. Browningwith only a few pauls in his pocket, declaring that nothing should everinduce him to return. 

'Mr. Browning, an interview with the family at the villa havingsatisfied him that reconciliation or return was indeed past question, put himself at once in communication with Mr. Forster and with Landor'sbrothers in England. The latter instantly undertook to supply the needsof their eldest brother during the remainder of his life. Thenceforth anincome sufficient for his frugal wants was forwarded regularly for hisuse through the friend who had thus come forward at his need. To Mr. Browning's respectful and judicious guidance Landor showed himselfdocile from the first. Removed from the inflictions, real and imaginary, of his life at Fiesole, he became another man, and at times still seemedto those about him like the old Landor at his best. It was in July, 1859, that the new arrangements for his life were made. The remainderof that summer he spent at Siena, first as the guest of Mr. Story, theAmerican sculptor and poet, next in a cottage rented for him by Mr. Browning near his own. In the autumn of the same year Landor removed toa set of apartments in the Via Nunziatina in Florence, close to theCasa Guidi, in a house kept by a former servant of Mrs. Browning's, anEnglishwoman married to an Italian. * Here he continued to live duringthe five years that yet remained to him. '

 * Wilson, Mrs. Browning's devoted maid, and another most faithful servant of hers and her husband's, Ferdinando Romagnoli. 

Mr. Landor's presence is also referred to, with the more importantcircumstance of a recent illness of Mrs. Browning's, in twocharacteristic and interesting letters of this period, one writtenby Mr. Browning to Frederic Leighton, the other by his wife to hersister-in-law. Mr. -- now Sir F. -- Leighton had been studying art duringthe previous winter in Italy. 

Kingdom of Piedmont, Siena: Oct. 9, '59. 

'My dear Leighton--I hope--and think--you know what delight it gaveme to hear from you two months ago. I was in great trouble at the timeabout my wife who was seriously ill. As soon as she could bear removalwe brought her to a villa here. She slowly recovered and is at last _well_--I believe--but weak still and requiring more attention than usual. Weshall be obliged to return to Rome for the winter--not choosing to risklosing what we have regained with some difficulty. Now you know why Idid not write at once--and may imagine why, having waited so long, I putoff telling you for a week or two till I could say certainly what we dowith ourselves. If any amount of endeavour could induce you to join usthere--Cartwright, Russell, the Vatican and all--and if such a step werenot inconsistent with your true interests--you should have it: but Iknow very well that you love Italy too much not to have had weightyreasons for renouncing her at present--and I want your own good andnot my own contentment in the matter. Wherever you are, be sure I shallfollow your proceedings with deep and true interest. I heard of yoursuccesses--and am now anxious to know how you get on with the greatpicture, the 'Ex voto'--if it does not prove full of beauty and power, two of us will be shamed, that's all! But _I_ don't fear, mind! Dokeep me informed of your progress, from time to time--a few lines willserve--and then I shall slip some day into your studio, and buffet thepiano, without having grown a stranger. Another thing--do take propercare of your health, and exercise yourself; give those vile indigestionsno chance against you; keep up your spirits, and be as distinguished andhappy as God meant you should. Can I do anything for you at Rome--not tosay, Florence? We go thither (i. E. To Florence) to-morrow, stay there amonth, probably, and then take the Siena road again. '

The next paragraph refers to some orders for photographs, and is notspecially interesting. 

Cartwright arrived here a fortnight ago--very pleasant it was to seehim: he left for Florence, stayed a day or two and returned to Mrs. Cartwright (who remained at the Inn) and they all departed prosperouslyyesterday for Rome. Odo Russell spent two days here on his waythither--we liked him much. Prinsep and Jones--do you know them?--are inthe town. The Storys have passed the summer in the villa opposite, --andno less a lion than dear old Landor is in a house a few steps off. Itake care of him--his amiable family having clawed him a littletoo sharply: so strangely do things come about! I mean his Fiesole'family'--a trifle of wife, sons and daughter--not his Englishrelatives, who are generous and good in every way. 

Take any opportunity of telling dear Mrs. Sartoris (howeverunnecessarily) that I and my wife remember her with the old feeling--Itrust she is well and happy to heart's content. Pen is quite well andrejoicing just now in a Sardinian pony on which he gallops like Puck ona dragon-fly's back. My wife's kind regard and best wishes go with thoseof, Dear Leighton, yours affectionately ever, R. Browning. 

October 1859. 

Mrs. To Miss Browning. 

'. . . After all, it is not a cruel punishment to have to go to Romeagain this winter, though it will be an undesirable expense, and wedid wish to keep quiet this winter, --the taste for constant wanderingshaving passed away as much for me as for Robert. We begin to see thatby no possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end--andthen we don't work so well, don't live to as much use either forourselves or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend to liveat Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, whatwith going away for the summer and going away for the winter. It'stoo true. It's the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there isimpossible for us, almost just as to live out of Italy at all, isimpossible for us. It isn't caprice on our part. Siena pleases us verymuch--the silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, and thecountry is very pretty--though no more than pretty--nothing marked orromantic--no mountains, except so far off as to be like a cloud onlyon clear days--and no water. Pretty dimpled ground, covered with lowvineyards, purple hills, not high, with the sunsets clothing them. . . . We shall not leave Florence till November--Robert must see Mr. Landor(his adopted son, Sarianna) settled in his new apartments with Wilsonfor a duenna. It's an excellent plan for him and not a bad one forWilson. . . . Forgive me if Robert has told you this already. Deardarling Robert amuses me by talking of his "gentleness and sweetness". A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, and veryaffectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but of self-restraint, hehas not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. Wilson will runmany risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. What do you sayto dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like what's on it?And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now have been alreadyaccused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion (though therewas talk of the probability of Mr. Landor's "throat being cut in hissleep"--) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him--andthe poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, to beguilethe time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. Helaughs carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days he will haveto write an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me. '

Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome:

'. . . We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartmentbefore it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look-out into a littlegarden, quiet and cheerful, and he doesn't mind a situation rather outof the way. He pays four pounds ten (English) the month. Wilson hasthirty pounds a year for taking care of him--which sounds a good deal, but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionateimpulses--but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. Nothingcoheres in him--either in his opinions, or, I fear, his affections. Itisn't age--he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, andI must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert alwayssaid that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary. At present Landor is very fond of him--but I am quite prepared for histurning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been sodevoted for years and years. Only one isn't kind for what one gets byit, or there wouldn't be much kindness in this world. . . . '

Mr. Browning always declared that his wife could impute evil to no one, that she was a living denial of that doctrine of original sin to whichher Christianity pledged her; and the great breadth and perfect charityof her views habitually justified the assertion; but she evidentlypossessed a keen insight into character, which made her completesuspension of judgment on the subject of Spiritualism very difficult tounderstand. 

The spiritualistic coterie had found a satisfactory way of explainingMr. Browning's antagonistic attitude towards it. He was jealous, it wassaid, because the Spirits on one occasion had dropped a crown on to hiswife's head and none on to his own. The first instalment of hislong answer to this grotesque accusation appears in a letter of Mrs. Browning's, probably written in the course of the winter of 1859-60. 

'. . . My brother George sent me a number of the "National Magazine"with my face in it, after Marshall Wood's medallion. My comfort is thatmy greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not gofar with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have itsdue weight in arresting the sale of "Aurora Leigh" from henceforth. Younever saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman with theneck of a vicious bull. . . . Still, I am surprised, I own, at theamount of success, and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies aboutit, far more than if it all related to a book of his own. The form ofthe story, and also, something in the philosophy, seem to have caughtthe crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repelsrather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . GivePeni's and my love to the dearest 'nonno' (grandfather) whose sublimeunselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast towhat is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touchedfeeling. (When _he_ is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained orhumbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a longlife's ungoverned will. ) May God bless him!--. . . Robert has made histhird bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they arefinished--it's only matter of education. When the power of execution isachieved, he will try at something original. Then reading hurts him; aslong as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time--hecan do it now better than at the beginning. The consequence of whichis that an active occupation is salvation to him. . . . Nobody exactlyunderstands him except me, who am in the inside of him and hear himbreathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloudwith me and can't stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems done thiswinter very much, and here was a bright room with three windowsconsecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and didnothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hourstogether--there has been little poetry done since last winter, whenhe did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modellingcombines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, andthe more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and beenhappy. So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture--Icouldn't in fact at all. He has material for a volume, and will work atit this summer, he says. 

'His power is much in advance of "Strafford", which is his poorest workof art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of thepen. 

'At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, andfor my part I set it down as an infamy of that public--no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which Iacknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. Iwonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English ladyof rank, an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, the otherday, the American minister, whether "Robert was not an American. " Theminister answered--"is it possible that _you_ ask me this? Why, there isnot so poor a village in the United States, where they would not tellyou that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were sorryhe was not an American. " Very pretty of the American minister, was itnot?--and literally true, besides. . . . Ah, dear Sarianna--I don'tcomplain for myself of an unappreciating public. I _have no reason_. But, just for _that_ reason, I complain more about Robert--only he does nothear me complain--to _you_ I may say, that the blindness, deafness andstupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Of course Milsandhad heard his name--well the contrary would have been strange. Robert_is_. All England can't prevent his existence, I suppose. But nobodythere, except a small knot of pre-Raffaellite men, pretend to do himjustice. Mr. Forster has done the best, --in the press. As a sort oflion, Robert has his range in society--and--for the rest, you shouldsee Chapman's returns!--While, in America he is a power, a writer, apoet--he is read--he lives in the hearts of the people. 

'"Browning readings" here in Boston--"Browning evenings" there. For therest, the English hunt lions, too, Sarianna, but their lions are chieflychosen among lords and railway kings. . . . '

We cannot be surprised at Mrs. Browning's desire for a more sustainedliterary activity on her husband's part. We learn from his ownsubsequent correspondence that he too regarded the persevering exerciseof his poetic faculty as almost a religious obligation. But it becomesthe more apparent that the restlessness under which he was now labouringwas its own excuse; and that its causes can have been no mystery evento those 'outside' him. The life and climate of Italy were beginningto undermine his strength. We owe it perhaps to the great and sorrowfulchange, which was then drawing near, that the full power of workreturned to him. 

During the winter of 1859-60, Mr. Val Prinsep was in Rome. He had goneto Siena with Mr. Burne Jones, bearing an introduction from Rossetti toMr. Browning and his wife; and the acquaintance with them was renewedin the ensuing months. Mr. Prinsep had acquired much knowledge of thepopular, hence picturesque aspects of Roman life, through a Frenchartist long resident in the city; and by the help of the two young menMr. Browning was also introduced to them. The assertion that during hismarried life he never dined away from home must be so far modified, thathe sometimes joined Mr. Prinsep and his friend in a Bohemian meal, at aninn near the Porta Pinciana which they much frequented; and he gained inthis manner some distinctive experiences which he liked long afterwardsto recall. I am again indebted to Mr. Prinsep for a description of someof these. 

'The first time he honoured us was on an evening when the poet ofthe quarter of the "Monte" had announced his intention of coming tochallenge a rival poet to a poetical contest. Such contests are, orwere, common in Rome. In old times the Monte and the Trastevere, thetwo great quarters of the eternal city, held their meetings on the PonteRotto. The contests were not confined to the effusions of the poeticalmuse. Sometimes it was a strife between two lute-players, sometimesguitarists would engage, and sometimes mere wrestlers. The rivalry wasso keen that the adverse parties finished up with a general fight. Sothe Papal Government had forbidden the meetings on the old bridge. But still each quarter had its pet champions, who were wont to meet inprivate before an appreciative, but less excitable audience, than inolden times. 

'Gigi (the host) had furnished a first-rate dinner, and his usual tapof excellent wine. ('Vino del Popolo' he called it. ) The 'Osteria' hadfilled; the combatants were placed opposite each other on either sideof a small table on which stood two 'mezzi'--long glass bottles holdingabout a quart apiece. For a moment the two poets eyed each other liketwo cocks seeking an opportunity to engage. Then through the crowd astalwart carpenter, a constant attendant of Gigi's, elbowed his way. He leaned over the table with a hand on each shoulder, and in a neatlyturned couplet he then addressed the rival bards. 

'"You two, " he said, "for the honour of Rome, must do your best, forthere is now listening to you a great Poet from England. "

'Having said this, he bowed to Browning, and swaggered back to his placein the crowd, amid the applause of the on-lookers. 

'It is not necessary to recount how the two Improvisatori poetized, evenif I remembered, which I do not. 

'On another occasion, when Browning and Story were dining with us, wehad a little orchestra (mandolins, two guitars, and a lute, ) to play tous. The music consisted chiefly of well-known popular airs. While theywere playing with great fervour the Hymn to Garibaldi--an air strictlyforbidden by the Papal Government, three blows at the door resoundedthrough the 'Osteria'. The music stopped in a moment. I saw Gigi wasvery pale as he walked down the room. There was a short parley at thedoor. It opened, and a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes marched solemnlyup to the counter from which drink was supplied. There was a deadsilence while Gigi supplied them with large measures of wine, which thegendarmes leisurely imbibed. Then as solemnly they marched out again, with their heads well in the air, looking neither to the right nor theleft. Most discreet if not incorruptible guardians of the peace! Whenthe door was shut the music began again; but Gigi was so earnest inhis protestations, that my friend Browning suggested we should get intocarriages and drive to see the Coliseum by moonlight. And so we salliedforth, to the great relief of poor Gigi, to whom it meant, if reported, several months of imprisonment, and complete ruin. 

'In after-years Browning frequently recounted with delight this nightmarch. 

'"We drove down the Corso in two carriages, " he would say. "In one wereour musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people all asked, 'whoare these who make all this parade?' At last some one said, 'Withoutdoubt these are the fellows who won the lottery, ' and everybody cried, 'Of course these are the lucky men who have won. '"'

The two persons whom Mr. Browning saw most, and most intimately, duringthis and the ensuing winter, were probably Mr. And Mrs. Story. Allusionhas already been made to the opening of the acquaintance at the Bathsof Lucca in 1853, to its continuance in Rome in '53 and '54, and to theartistic pursuits which then brought the two men into close and frequentcontact with each other. These friendly relations were cemented by theirchildren, who were of about the same age; and after Mrs. Browning'sdeath, Miss Browning took her place in the pleasant intercourse whichrenewed itself whenever their respective visits to Italy and to Englandagain brought the two families together. A no less lasting and trulyaffectionate intimacy was now also growing up with Mr. Cartwright andhis wife--the Cartwrights (of Aynhoe) of whom mention was made in theSiena letter to F. Leighton; and this too was subsequently to includetheir daughter, now Mrs. Guy Le Strange, and Mr. Browning's sister. Icannot quite ascertain when the poet first knew Mr. Odo Russell, and hismother, Lady William Russell, who was also during this, or at allevents the following winter, in Rome; and whom afterwards in Londonhe regularly visited until her death; but the acquaintance was alreadyentering on the stage in which it would spread as a matter of coursethrough every branch of the family. His first country visit, when he hadreturned to England, was paid with his son to Woburn Abbey. 

We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficultiesof Mr. Browning's biography: that of giving a sufficient idea of thegrowing extent and growing variety of his social relations. It isevident from the fragments of his wife's correspondence that during, aswell as after, his married life, he always and everywhere knew everyonewhom it could interest him to know. These acquaintances constantlyripened into friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They werenecessarily often marked by interesting circumstances or distinctivecharacter. To follow them one by one, would add not chapters, butvolumes, to our history. The time has not yet come at which this couldeven be undertaken; and any attempt at systematic selection would createa false impression of the whole. I must therefore be still content totouch upon such passages of Mr. Browning's social experience as lie inthe course of a comparatively brief record; leaving all such as are notdirectly included in it to speak indirectly for themselves. 

Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859:

'Massimo d'Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noblehead of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personaldistinction you will guess at, * though I don't pretend to have beeninsensible to that. '

 * An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company with the young Prince of Wales. 

Dr. --afterwards Cardinal--Manning was also among the distinguished orinteresting persons whom they knew in Rome. 

Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or1860, when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once morein contemplation. 

Casa Guidi. 

'My dearest Sarianna, --I am delighted to say that we have arrived, andsee our dear Florence--the Queen of Italy, after all . . . A comfortis that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever wasknown to look--and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his beard . . . Which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentinetouch giving a character of elevation and thought to the wholephysiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed--let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrivalin Rome, from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit ofsuicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard . . . Whiskers and all!!I _cried_ when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone intohysterics and still been reasonable--for no human being was ever sodisfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered heartand voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn'tlet it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of hislooking-glass) he yielded the point, --and the beard grew--but it grewwhite--which was the just punishment of the gods--our sins leave theirtraces. 

'Well, poor darling Robert won't shock you after all--you can't choosebut be satisfied with his looks. M. De Monclar swore to me that he wasnot changed for the intermediate years. . . . '

The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, and fromthence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxietyconcerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook, * then attacked by afatal disease. 

 * The name was afterwards changed to Altham. 

'. . . There is nothing or little to add to my last account of myprecious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than itis--be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopefultemperament, and I never could go on systematically making the worst ofany case. I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectationof a letter, which is hard. I fight with it for Robert's sake, but allthe work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. She isconfined 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 dailybread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me a good deal, andinterfered with the advantages of the summer, but that's the least. PoorRobert's scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out.. . . '

This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by justthe circumstance from which some comfort had been expected--the secondpostal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fearswhich might have found a moment's forgetfulness in the longer absence ofnews, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasionthe suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife'sdesire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. Noanswer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, andthat the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make uphis mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had beenstopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertakento forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberalsympathies of Mr. And Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open topolitical suspicion. 

Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning alwaysbelieved that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened hiswife's life, though it is also possible that her already loweredvitality increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her owncasual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrestedprogress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have beena mistake, that active signs of consumption were apparent in her evenbefore the illness of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginningof the end. She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely arecluse, during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay inRome. 

She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning inApril, in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy. 

'. . . In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractivethan when I saw him first, sixteen years ago. . . . I believe people ingeneral would think the same exactly. As to the modelling--well, I toldyou that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. But itdoes not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a greatdeal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, andthe 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 alittle with him on this point, for I don't think him right; that isto say, it would not be right for me . . . But Robert waits for aninclination, 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. Iyearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present. . . . Youwill think Robert looking very well when you see him; indeed, you mayjudge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used toforbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, but all artistswere against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip does notharmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, and the beard ispointed. . . . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful, _I_ think, but then I think him all beautiful, and always. . . . '

Mr. Browning's old friend, Madame du Quaire, * came to Rome in December. She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to herfor some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its Englishcolony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling withher brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her inher sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, and all that 'conquers death'. He little knew how soon he would need thesame comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife'spoems; 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 someyears afterwards to another friend: 'You are wrong--quite wrong--she hasgenius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sortof angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something--he wantsto make you see it as he sees it--shows you one point of view, carriesyou off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you tounderstand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns youoff a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creativepower is hers, not mine. '

 * Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New Castle. 

Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after theirreturn to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection towhich she was subject; and a new doctor who was called in discoveredgrave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed tobe existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively, indeedactually, 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 orhand to name 'Cavour'. That great soul which meditated and made Italyhas gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have savedhim to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcelycomprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such aman!'

Her death was signalized by the appearance--this time, I am told, unexpected--of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earthas to come into contact with it. 

Chapter 14

1861-1863

Miss Blagden--Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton--His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies--Establishmentin London--Plan of Life--Letter to Madame du Quaire--Miss ArabelBarrett--Biarritz--Letters to Miss Blagden--Conception of 'The Ring andthe Book'--Biographical Indiscretion--New Edition of his Works--Mr. AndMrs. Procter. 

The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browningin this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden--Isa Blagden, as shewas called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her couldhitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet's life; butthe friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browningbrings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. She wasfor many years a centre of English society in Florence; for her genial, hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes (she wrote one or twonovels, I believe not without merit), secured her the acquaintance ofmany interesting persons, some of whom occasionally made her house theirhome; and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo livepleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation who werepermitted to share in them. 

She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, and induced hisfather to spend his nights under her roof, while the last painful dutiesdetained him in Florence. He at least gave her cause to deny, what hasbeen so often affirmed, that great griefs are necessarily silent. Shealways spoke of this period as her 'apocalyptic month', so deeply poeticwere the ravings which alternated with the simple human cry of thedesolate heart: 'I want her, I want her!' But the ear which receivedthese utterances has long been closed in death. The only writtenoutbursts of Mr. Browning's frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, tohis sister, and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent lossmost naturally invoked them, and who has since thought best, so far asrested with her, to destroy the letters in which they were contained. Itis 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 tohim in his son. This note is struck in two letters which are given me topublish, written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning's death; and wesee also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow, and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace andpainlessness 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 saywhat you do--I know you feel for me. I can't write about it--but therewere many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day--thereseemed no pain, and (what she would have felt most) the knowledge ofseparation 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 aday or two just to talk with her sister--but if I can see you it will bea great satisfaction. Don't fancy I am 'prostrated', I have enough to dofor the boy and myself in carrying out her wishes. He is better than onewould have thought, and behaves dearly to me. Everybody has been verykind. 

Tell dear Mrs. Sartoris that I know her heart and thank her with allmine. After my day or two at London I shall go to some quiet place inFrance to get right again and then stay some time at Paris in order tofind out leisurely what it will be best to do for Peni--but eventually Ishall go to England, I suppose. I don't mean to live with anybody, evenmy own family, but to occupy myself thoroughly, seeing dear friends, however, like you. God bless you. Yours ever affectionately, RobertBrowning. 

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 forme now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told yousomething perhaps--and one day I shall see you and be able to tell youmyself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered verylittle pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacksof cold and cough she was subject to--had no presentiment of the resultwhatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she wasabout to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was 'better', 'quite comfortable--if I would but come to bed, ' to within a few minutesof the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from thebeginning of the week's illness--but when I reasoned about it, therewas no justifying fear--she said on the last evening 'it is merely theold attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago--there is nodoubt 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 littlereason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she sleptheavily, and brokenly--that was the bad sign--but then she would situp, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. Atfour o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid andsent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, 'Well, you _are_ determined to make an exaggerated case of it!' Then came whatmy heart will keep till I see her again and longer--the most perfectexpression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Alwayssmilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's--and in a few minutesshe died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustainme that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was nolingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God tookher to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasybed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by herearnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must havebeen aware of our parting's approach--but she was quite conscious, hadwords at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was inthe next room. Her last word was when I asked 'How do you feel?'--'Beautiful. ' You know I have her dearest wishes and interests toattend to _at once_--her child to care for, educate, establish properly;and my own life to fulfil as properly, --all just as she would requirewere she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years--go to Londonfor a few days' talk with Arabel--then go to my father and begin to tryleisurely 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 istaken and remains. 

I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always begrateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did. 

She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if oneconsider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well--verydear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can't know hisloss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine--he will want what henever had--that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety--I _have_ had everything and shall not forget. 

God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isagoes with me--dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for uswere you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a dayor two before the end--she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palacefor you, --Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151, rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, RobertBrowning. 

The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thoughtless feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, Ibelieve, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men. His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. Atabout the end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied byMiss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself mustsoon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on thesubject of his wife's provisional disinterment, * in a manner which showsher to have been on the spot. 

 * Required for the subsequent placing of the monument designed by F. Leighton. 

Sept. '61. 

'. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadfulpreliminaries, the provisional removement &c. When they are proceededwith, --will you do--all you can--suggest every regard to decency andproper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that manof the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure--I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when thetime shall come--a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had leftthe turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won'tthink any more of it--now--at least. . . . '

The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies ofthe occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connectsitself with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, whichwas a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank, as hiswife had done, from the 'earth side' of the portentous change; but truthcompels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part in hisattitude 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 nosympathy for the still human tenderness with which so many of us regardthe mortal remains of those they have loved, or with the solemn orfriendly interest in which that tenderness so often reflects itself inmore neutral minds. He would claim all respect for the corpse, but hewould turn away from it. Another aspect of this feeling shows itself ina letter to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, inreference to his wife's monument, with which Mr. Barrett had professedhimself pleased. His tone is characterized by an almost religiousreverence for the memory which that monument enshrines. He neverthelesswrites:

'I hope to see it one day--and, although I have no kind of concern as towhere the old clothes of myself shall be thrown, yet, if my fortune besuch, and my survivors be not unduly troubled, I should like them to liein 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 ArabelBarrett, was living. He had declared in his first grief that he wouldnever keep house again, and he began his solitary life in lodgingswhich at his request she had engaged for him; but the discomfort of thisarrangement soon wearied him of it; and before many months had passed, he had sent to Florence for his furniture, and settled himself in thehouse in Warwick Crescent, which possessed, besides other advantages, that of being close to Delamere Terrace, where Miss Barrett had taken upher abode. 

This first period of Mr. Browning's widowed life was one of unutterabledreariness, in which the smallest and yet most unconquerable element wasthe prosaic ugliness of everything which surrounded him. It was fifteenyears since he had spent a winter in England; he had never spent one inLondon. There had been nothing to break for him the transition from thestately beauty of Florence to the impressions and associations of theHarrow and Edgware Roads, and of Paddington Green. He might haveescaped this neighbourhood by way of Westbourne Terrace; but hiswalks constantly led him in an easterly direction; and whether in anunconscious hugging of his chains, or, as was more probable, from thedesire to save time, he would drag his aching heart and reluctant bodythrough the sordidness or the squalor of this short cut, rather thanseek the pleasanter thoroughfares which were open to him. Even theprettiness of Warwick Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphereof low or ugly life which encompassed it on almost every side. Hishaunting dream was one day to have done with it all; to have fulfilledhis mission with his son, educated him, launched him in a suitablecareer, and to go back to sunshine and beauty again. He learned bydegrees to regard London as a home; as the only fitting centre for thevaried energies which were reviving in him; to feel pride and pleasurein its increasingly picturesque character. He even learned to appreciatethe outlook from his house--that 'second from the bridge' of which socurious a presentment had entered into one of the poems of the 'Men andWomen'*--in spite of the refuse of humanity which would sometimes yellat the street corner, or fling stones at his plate-glass. But all thishad to come; and it is only fair to admit that twenty-nine years ago thebeauties of which I have spoken were in great measure to come also. Hecould not then in any mood have exclaimed, as he did to a friend two orthree years ago: 'Shall we not have a pretty London if things go on inthis 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, hadestablished Mr. Browning in England, would in every case have lain verynear to his conscience and to his heart; but it especially urged itselfupon them through the absence of any injunction concerning it on hiswife's part. No farewell words of hers had commended their child to hisfather's love and care; and though he may, for the moment, have imputedthis fact to unconsciousness of her approaching death, his deeperinsight soon construed the silence into an expression of trust, morebinding upon him than the most earnest exacted promise could have been. The growing boy's education occupied a considerable part of his time andthoughts, for he had determined not to send him to school, but, as faras possible, himself prepare him for the University. He must also, insome degree, have supervised his recreations. He had therefore, for thepresent, little leisure for social distractions, and probably at firstvery little inclination for them. His plan of life and duty, and thesense of responsibility attendant on it, had been communicated to Madamedu 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 foundmyself unable to call on you as I had been intending to do. Next morningI left for this place (near St. -Malo, but I give what they say is theproper address). I want first to beg you to forgive my withholding solong your little oval mirror--it is safe in Paris, and I am vexed athaving stupidly forgotten to bring it when I tried to see you. I shallstay here till the autumn sets in, then return to Paris for a fewdays--the first of which will be the best, if I can see you in thecourse of it--afterward, I settle in London. 

When I meant to pass the winter in Paris, I hoped, the first thingalmost, to be near you--it now seems to me, however, that the bestcourse for the Boy is to begin a good English education at once. I shalltake quiet lodgings (somewhere near Kensington Gardens, I ratherthink) and get a Tutor. I want, if I can (according to my presentvery imperfect knowledge) to get the poor little fellow fit for theUniversity without passing thro' a Public School. I, myself, could neverhave done much by either process, but he is made differently--imitatesand emulates and all that. How I should be grateful if you would help meby 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 seemsto 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 horsehere. The place is singularly unspoiled, fresh and picturesque, andlovely to heart's content. I wish you were here!--and if you knewexactly what such a wish means, you would need no assuring in additionthat I am Yours affectionately and gratefully ever Robert Browning. 

The person of whom he saw most was his sister-in-law, whom he visited, Ibelieve, every evening. Miss Barrett had been a favourite sister of Mrs. Browning's, and this constituted a sufficient title to her husband'saffection. But she was also a woman to be loved for her own sake. Deeplyreligious and very charitable, she devoted herself to visiting thepoor--a form of philanthropy which was then neither so widespread nor sofashionable as it has since become; and she founded, in 1850, the firstTraining School or Refuge which had ever existed for destitute littlegirls. It need hardly be added that Mr. And Miss Browning co-operated inthe work. The little poem, 'The Twins', republished in 1855 in 'Men andWomen', was first printed (with Mrs. Browning's 'Plea for the RaggedSchools of London') for the benefit of this Refuge. It was in MissBarrett's company that Mr. Browning used to attend the church of Mr. Thomas Jones, to a volume of whose 'Sermons and Addresses' he wrote ashort 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 justbefallen poor Rossetti, which I only heard of last night--his wife, whohad been, as an invalid, in the habit of taking laudanum, swallowedan overdose--was found by the poor fellow on his return from theworking-men's class in the evening, under the effects of it--help wascalled in, the stomach-pump used; but she died in the night, about aweek ago. There has hardly been a day when I have not thought, "if Ican, to-morrow, I will go and see him, and thank him for his book, andreturn his sister's poems. " Poor, dear fellow! . . . 

'. . . Have I not written a long letter, for me who hate the sight ofa 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 shallbe interested in the minutest thing you put down. What sort of weatheris it? You cannot but be better at your new villa than in the largesolitary one. There I am again, going up the winding way to it, andseeing the herbs in red flower, and the butterflies on the top of thewall under the olive-trees! Once more, good-bye. . . . '

The hatred of writing of which he here speaks refers probably to theclass of letters which he had lately been called upon to answer, andwhich must have been painful in proportion to the kindness by whichthey were inspired. But it returned to him many years later, in simpleweariness of the mental and mechanical act, and with such force that hewould often answer an unimportant note in person, rather than make theseemingly much smaller exertion of doing so with his pen. It was themore remarkable that, with the rarest exceptions, he replied to everyletter which came to him. 

The late summer of the former year had been entirely unrefreshing, inspite of his acknowledgment of the charms of St. -Enogat. There was moredistraction and more soothing in the stay at Cambo and Biarritz, whichwas chosen for the holiday of 1862. Years afterwards, when the thoughtof Italy carried with it less longing and even more pain, Mr. Browningwould 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. Hewrote to Miss Blagden:

Biarritz, Maison Gastonbide: Sept. 19, '62. 

'. . . I stayed a month at green pleasant little Cambo, and then camehere from pure inability to go elsewhere--St. -Jean de Luz, on whichI had reckoned, being still fuller of Spaniards who profit by the newrailway. This place is crammed with gay people of whom I see nothingbut their outsides. The sea, sands, and view of the Spanish coast andmountains, are superb and this house is on the town's outskirts. I staytill the end of the month, then go to Paris, and then get my neck backinto the old collar again. Pen has managed to get more enjoyment out ofhis holiday than seemed at first likely--there was a nice French familyat Cambo with whom he fraternised, riding with the son and escortingthe daughter in her walks. His red cheeks look as they should. For me, Ihave got on by having a great read at Euripides--the one book I broughtwith me, besides attending to my own matters, my new poem that is aboutto be; and of which the whole is pretty well in my head, --the Romanmurder 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 andthe Book'. 

It has often been told, though with curious confusion as regards thedate, how Mr. Browning picked up the original parchment-bound record ofthe Franceschini case, on a stall of the Piazza San Lorenzo. We readin the first section of his own work that he plunged instantly into thestudy of this record; that he had mastered it by the end of the day; andthat he then stepped out on to the terrace of his house amid the sultryblackness and silent lightnings of the June night, as the adjacentchurch of San Felice sent forth its chants, and voices buzzed in thestreet below, --and saw the tragedy as a living picture unfold itselfbefore him. These were his last days at Casa Guidi. It was four yearsbefore he definitely began the work. The idea of converting the storyinto a poem cannot even have occurred to him for some little time, sincehe offered it for prose treatment to Miss Ogle, the author of 'A LostLove'; and for poetic use, I am almost certain, to one of his leadingcontemporaries. It was this slow process of incubation which gaveso much force and distinctness to his ultimate presentment of thecharacters; though it infused a large measure of personal imagination, and, as we shall see, of personal reminiscence, into their historicaltruth. 

Before 'The Ring and the Book' was actually begun, 'Dramatis Personae'and 'In a Balcony' were to be completed. Their production had beendelayed during Mrs. Browning's lifetime, and necessarily interrupted byher death; but we hear of the work as progressing steadily during thissummer of 1862. 

A painful subject of correspondence had been also for some time engagingMr. Browning's thoughts and pen. A letter to Miss Blagden writtenJanuary 19, '63, is so expressive of his continued attitude towards thequestions involved that, in spite of its strong language, his familyadvise its publication. The name of the person referred to will alone beomitted. 

'. . . Ever since I set foot in England I have been pestered withapplications for leave to write the Life of my wife--I have refused--andthere an end. I have last week received two communications from friends, enclosing the letters of a certain . . . Of . . . , asking them fordetails of life and letters, for a biography he is engaged in--adding, that he "has secured the correspondence with her old friend . . . " Thinkof this beast working away at this, not deeming my feelings or those ofher family worthy of notice--and meaning to print letters written yearsand years ago, on the most intimate and personal subjects to an "oldfriend"--which, at the poor . . . [friend's] death fell into the handsof a complete stranger, who, at once wanted to print them, but desistedthrough Ba's earnest expostulation enforced by my own threat to takelaw proceedings--as fortunately letters are copyright. I find this womandied last year, and her son writes to me this morning that . . . Gotthem from him as autographs merely--he will try and get them back. . . , evidently a blackguard, got my letter, which gave him his deserts, onSaturday--no answer yet, --if none comes, I shall be forced to advertisein the 'Times', and obtain an injunction. But what I suffer in feelingthe hands of these blackguards (for I forgot to say another man has beenmaking similar applications to friends) what I undergo with their pawsin 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 thatwhich _she_ would have writhed under--if it ever _were_ necessary, why, _I_should be forced to do it, and, with any good to her memory and fame, my own pain in the attempt would be turned into joy--I should _do_ it atwhatever 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 alongwith his breath. 

'I am going to reprint the Greek Christian Poets and anotheressay--nothing that ought to be published shall be kept back, --and thisshe certainly intended to correct, augment, and re-produce--but _I_ openthe doubled-up paper! Warn anyone you may think needs the warning of theutter distress in which I should be placed were this scoundrel, orany other of the sort, to baffle me and bring out the letters--I can'tprevent fools from uttering their folly upon her life, as they do onevery other subject, but the law protects property, --as these lettersare. Only last week, or so, the Bishop of Exeter stopped the publicationof an announced "Life"--containing extracts from his correspondence--andso I shall do. . . . '

Mr. Browning only resented the exactions of modern biography in thesame degree as most other right-minded persons; but there was, tohis thinking, something specially ungenerous in dragging to light anyimmature or unconsidered utterance which the writer's later judgmentwould have disclaimed. Early work was always for him included in thiscategory; and here it was possible to disagree with him; since thepromise of genius has a legitimate interest from which no distancefrom its subsequent fulfilment can detract. But there could be nodisagreement as to the rights and decencies involved in the presentcase; and, as we hear no more of the letters to Mr. . . . , we mayperhaps assume that their intending publisher was acting in ignorance, but did not wish to act in defiance, of Mr. Browning's feeling in thematter. 

In the course of this year, 1863, Mr. Browning brought out, throughChapman and Hall, the still well-known and well-loved three-volumeedition of his works, including 'Sordello', but again excluding'Pauline'. A selection of his poems which appeared somewhat earlier, ifwe may judge by the preface, dated November 1862, deserves mention as atribute to friendship. The volume had been prepared by John Forster andBryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), 'two friends, ' as the prefacestates, 'who from the first appearance of 'Paracelsus' have regarded itswriter as among the few great poets of the century. ' Mr. Browning hadlong before signalized his feeling for Barry Cornwall by the dedicationof 'Colombe's Birthday'. He discharged the present debt to Mr. Procter, if such there was, by the attentions which he rendered to his infirm oldage. For many years he visited him every Sunday, in spite of a deafnessultimately so complete that it was only possible to converse with him inwriting. These visits were afterwards, at her urgent request, continuedto Mr. Procter's widow. 

Chapter 15

1863-1869

Pornic--'James Lee's Wife'--Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's--Letters toMiss Blagden--His own Estimate of his Work--His Father's Illness andDeath; Miss Browning--Le Croisic--Academic Honours; Letter to the Masterof Balliol--Death of Miss Barrett--Audierne--Uniform Edition of hisWorks--His rising Fame--'Dramatis Personae'--'The Ring and the Book';Character of Pompilia. 

The most constant contributions to Mr. Browning's history are suppliedduring the next eight or nine years by extracts from his letters to MissBlagden. Our next will be dated from Ste. -Marie, near Pornic, where heand his family again spent their holiday in 1864 and 1865. Some ideaof the life he led there is given at the close of a letter to FredericLeighton, August 17, 1863, in which he says:

'I live upon milk and fruit, bathe daily, do a good morning's work, reada little with Pen and somewhat more by myself, go to bed early, and getup earlyish--rather liking it all. '

This mention of a diet of milk and fruit recalls a favourite habit ofMr. Browning's: that of almost renouncing animal food whenever he wentabroad. It was partly promoted by the inferior quality of foreign meat, and showed no sign of specially agreeing with him, at all events in hislater years, when he habitually returned to England looking thinner andmore haggard than before he left it. But the change was always congenialto his taste. 

A fuller picture of these simple, peaceful, and poetic Pornic days comesto us through Miss Blagden, August 18:

'. . . This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like thatvillage where we stayed last year. Close to the sea--a hamlet of a dozenhouses, perfectly lonely--one may walk on the edge of the low rocks bythe sea for miles. Our house is the Mayor's, large enough, clean andbare. If I could, I would stay just as I am for many a day. I feel outof the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window; with the littlechurch, a field, a few houses, and the sea. On a weekday there is nobodyin 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 amournful wind!

'I wrote a poem yesterday of 120 lines, and mean to keep writing whetherI like it or not. . . . '

That 'window' was the 'Doorway' in 'James Lee's Wife'. The sea, thefield, and the fig-tree were visible from it. 

A long interval in the correspondence, at all events so far as we areconcerned, carries us to the December of 1864, and then Mr. Browningwrote:

'. . . On the other hand, I feel such comfort and delight in doing thebest I can with my own object of life, poetry--which, I think, I nevercould have seen the good of before, that it shows me I have taken theroot I _did_ take, _well_. I hope to do much more yet--and that theflower of it will be put into Her hand somehow. I really have greatopportunities and advantages--on the whole, almost unprecedented ones--Ithink, no other disturbances and cares than those I am most grateful forbeing allowed to have. . . . '

One of our very few written reminiscences of Mr. Browning's social liferefers to this year, 1864, and to the evening, February 12, on whichhe signed his will in the presence of Mr. Francis Palgrave and AlfredTennyson. It is inscribed in the diary of Mr. Thomas Richmond, thenchaplain to St. George's Hospital; and Mr. Reginald Palgrave has kindlyprocured me a copy of it. A brilliant party had met at dinner at thehouse of Mr. F. Palgrave, York Gate, Regent's Park; Mr. Richmond, havingfulfilled a prior engagement, had joined it later. 'There were, inorder, ' he says, 'round the dinner-table (dinner being over), GiffordPalgrave, 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 thatevening. The names of those whom it had brought together, almost all tobe sooner or later numbered among the Poet's friends, were indeedenough to stamp it as worthy of recollection. One or two characteristicutterances of Mr. Browning are, however, the only ones which itseems advisable to repeat here. The conversation having turned on thecelebration of the Shakespeare ter-centenary, he said: 'Here we arecalled upon to acknowledge Shakespeare, we who have him in our verybones and blood, our very selves. The very recognition of Shakespeare'smerits 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 schoolboyswrite English verses as well as Latin and Greek. 'Woolner and SirFrancis Doyle were for this; Gladstone and Browning against it. '

Work had now found its fitting place in the Poet's life. It was nolonger the overflow of an irresistible productive energy; it was thedeliberate direction of that energy towards an appointed end. We hearsomething of his own feeling concerning this in a letter of August '65, again from Ste. -Marie, and called forth by some gossip concerning himwhich 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 showingmyself to be alive: and so indeed some folks say--but I hardly think it:for remember I was uninterruptedly (almost) in London from the timeI published 'Paracelsus' till I ended that string of plays with'Luria'--and I used to go out then, and see far more of merely literarypeople, critics &c. Than I do now, --but what came of it? There werealways a few people who had a certain opinion of my poems, but nobodycared to speak what he thought, or the things printed twenty-five yearsago would not have waited so long for a good word; but at last a new setof men arrive who don't mind the conventionalities of ignoring one andseeing everything in another--Chapman says, "the new orders come fromOxford and Cambridge, " and all my new cultivators are young men--morethan that, I observe that some of my old friends don't like at allthe irruption of outsiders who rescue me from their sober and privateapproval, and take those words out of their mouths "which they alwaysmeant to say" and never did. When there gets to be a general feeling ofthis kind, that there must be something in the works of an author, thereviews are obliged to notice him, such notice as it is--but what poorwork, even when doing its best! I mean poor in the failure to give ageneral notion of the whole works; not a particular one of such andsuch points therein. As I begun, so I shall end, --taking my own course, pleasing myself or aiming at doing so, and thereby, I hope, pleasingGod. 

'As I never did otherwise, I never had any fear as to what I did goingultimately to the bad, --hence in collected editions I always reprintedeverything, smallest and greatest. Do you ever see, by the way, thenumbers of the selection which Moxons publish? They are exclusivelypoems omitted in that other selection by Forster; it seems little usesending them to you, but when they are completed, if they give me afew copies, you shall have one if you like. Just before I left London, Macmillan was anxious to print a third selection, for his GoldenTreasury, which should of course be different from either--but _three_seem too absurd. There--enough of me--

'I certainly will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self beforeI die; for one reason, that I may help old Pen the better; I wasmuch struck by the kind ways, and interest shown in me by the Oxfordundergraduates, --those introduced to me by Jowett. --I am sure they wouldbe the more helpful to my son. So, good luck to my great venture, themurder-poem, which I do hope will strike you and all good lovers ofmine. . . . '

We cannot wonder at the touch of bitterness with which Mr. Browningdwells on the long neglect which he had sustained; but it is at firstsight difficult to reconcile this high positive estimate of the value ofhis poetry with the relative depreciation of his own poetic genius whichconstantly marks his attitude towards that of his wife. The factsare, however, quite compatible. He regarded Mrs. Browning's genius asgreater, because more spontaneous, than his own: owing less to life andits opportunities; but he judged his own work as the more important, because of the larger knowledge of life which had entered into itsproduction. He was wrong in the first terms of his comparison: for heunderrated the creative, hence spontaneous element in his own nature, while claiming primarily the position of an observant thinker; and heoverrated the amount of creativeness implied by the poetry of his wife. He failed to see that, given her intellectual endowments, and the lyricgift, the characteristics of her genius were due to circumstances asmuch as those of his own. Actual life is not the only source of poeticinspiration, though it may perhaps be the best. Mrs. Browning as a poetbecame what she was, not in spite of her long seclusion, but by help ofit. A touching paragraph, bearing upon this subject, is dated October'65. 

'. . . Another thing. I have just been making a selection of Ba's poemswhich is wanted--how I have done it, I can hardly say--it is one deardelight to know that the work of her goes on more effectually thanever--her books are more and more read--certainly, sold. A new editionof Aurora Leigh is completely exhausted within this year. . . . '

Of the thing next dearest to his memory, his Florentine home, he hadwritten in the January of this year:

'. . . Yes, Florence will never be _my_ Florence again. To build over orbeside Poggio seems barbarous and inexcusable. The Fiesole side don'tmatter. 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 buildround and round it, as many rings of houses as they please, --framing thepicture as deeply as they please? Is Casa Guidi to be turned into anyPublic Office? I should think that its natural destination. If I am atliberty 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 gothere, --I can see it in my head. " . . . Well, goodbye, dearest Isa. Ihave been for a few minutes--nay, a good many, --so really with you inFlorence that it would be no wonder if you heard my steps up the lane toyour house. . . . '

Part of a letter written in the September of '65 from Ste. -Marie may beinteresting as referring to the legend of Pornic included in 'DramatisPersonae'. 

'. . . I suppose my "poem" which you say brings me and Pornic togetherin your mind, is the one about the poor girl--if so, "fancy" (as Ihear you say) they have pulled down the church since I arrived lastmonth--there are only the shell-like, roofless walls left, for a fewweeks more; it was very old--built on a natural base of rock--smallenough, to be sure--so they build a smart new one behind it, and downgoes this; just as if they could not have pitched down their brickand stucco farther away, and left the old place for the fishermen--sohere--the church is even more picturesque--and certain old Normanornaments, capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in thedoorway, are at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the road-side. Thepeople here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense ofpicturesqueness 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 adinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, isstaying in town for a few weeks, --and she is just what she was andalways will be--very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. Imet him at a large party on Saturday--also Carlyle, whom I never met ata "drum" before. . . . Pen is drawing our owl--a bird that is the lightof our house, for his tameness and engaging ways. . . . '

May 19, '66. 

'. . . My father has been unwell, --he is better and will go intothe country the moment the east winds allow, --for in Paris, --ashere, --there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of sunshine. I hope tohear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: heis eighty-five, almost, --you see! otherwise his wonderful constitutionwould keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is absolutely asI always remember it, --and the other day when I wanted some informationabout a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular bookful of notesand extracts thereabout. . . . '

June 20, '66. 

'My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, and arrivedtime enough to pass twenty-four hours more with my father: he died onthe 14th--quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, which would haveovercome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties to the last--wasutterly indifferent to death, --asking with surprise what it was we wereaffected about since he was perfectly happy?--and kept his own strangesweetness of soul to the end--nearly his last words to me, as I wasfanning him, were "I am so afraid that I fatigue you, dear!" this, whilehis sufferings were great; for the strength of his constitution seemedimpossible to be subdued. He wanted three weeks exactly to complete hiseighty-fifth year. So passed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would so easily havemade him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or thelove of money or social influence meant. As it is, he was known byhalf-a-dozen friends. He was worthy of being Ba's father--out of thewhole world, only he, so far as my experience goes. She loved him, --and_he_ said, very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only thatpicture had put into his head that there might be such a thing as theworship of the images of saints. My sister will come and live withme henceforth. You see what she loses. All her life has been spent incaring for my mother, and seventeen years after that, my father. You maybe sure she does not rave and rend hair like people who have plenty toatone for in the past; but she loses very much. I returned to Londonlast night. . . . '

During his hurried journey to Paris, Mr. Browning was mentally blessingthe Emperor for having abolished the system of passports, and thusenabled him to reach his father's bedside in time. His early Italianjourneys had brought him some vexatious experience of the old order ofthings. 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 thenceforwardhis inseparable companion. Her presence with him must therefore beunderstood wherever I have had no special reason for mentioning it. 

They tried Dinard for the remainder of the summer; but finding itunsuitable, proceeded by St. -Malo to Le Croisic, the little sea-sidetown of south-eastern Brittany which two of Mr. Browning's poems havesince rendered famous. 

The following extract has no date. 

Le Croisic, Loire Inferieure. 

'. . . We all found Dinard unsuitable, and after staying a few days atSt. Malo resolved to try this place, and well for us, since it servesour purpose capitally. . . . We are in the most delicious and peculiarold house I ever occupied, the oldest in the town--plenty of greatrooms--nearly as much space as in Villa Alberti. The little town, andsurrounding country are wild and primitive, even a trifle beyond Pornicperhaps. Close by is Batz, a village where the men dress in white fromhead to foot, with baggy breeches, and great black flap hats;--oppositeis Guerande, the old capital of Bretagne: you have read about it inBalzac's 'Beatrix', --and other interesting places are near. The sea isall round our peninsula, and on the whole I expect we shall like it verymuch. . . . '

Later. 

'. . . We enjoyed Croisic increasingly to the last--spite of threeweeks' vile weather, in striking contrast to the golden months at Porniclast year. I often went to Guerande--once Sarianna and I walked from itin 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 conferredon him in June;* and in the month of October he was made honorary Fellowof Balliol College. Dr. Jowett allows me to publish the, as he terms it, very characteristic letter in which he acknowledged the distinction. Dr. Scott, afterwards Dean of Rochester, was then Master of Balliol. 

 * 'Not a lower degree than that of D. C. L. , but a much higher honour, hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time except to kings and royal personages. . . . ' So the Keeper of the Archives wrote to Mr. Browning at the time. 

19, Warwick Crescent: Oct. 21, '67. 

Dear Dr. Scott, --I am altogether unable to say how I feel as to thefact you communicate to me. I must know more intimately than you can howlittle worthy I am of such an honour, --you hardly can set the value ofthat honour, you who give, as I who take it. 

Indeed, there _are_ both 'duties and emoluments' attached to thisposition, --duties of deep and lasting gratitude, and emoluments throughwhich I shall be wealthy my life long. I have at least loved learningand the learned, and there needed no recognition of my love on theirpart to warrant my professing myself, as I do, dear Dr. Scott, yoursever most faithfully, Robert Browning. 

In the following year he received and declined the virtual offer of theLord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews, rendered vacant by thedeath of Mr. J. S. Mill. 

He returned with his sister to Le Croisic for the summer of 1867. 

In June 1868, Miss Arabel Barrett died, of a rheumatic affection ofthe heart. As did her sister seven years before, she passed away inMr. Browning's arms. He wrote the event to Miss Blagden as soon as itoccurred, describing also a curious circumstance attendant on it. 

19th June, '68. 

'. . . You know I am not superstitious--here is a note I made in a book, Tuesday, July 21, 1863. "Arabel told me yesterday that she had been muchagitated by a dream which happened the night before, Sunday, July19. She saw Her and asked 'when shall I be with you?' the reply was, 'Dearest, in five years, ' whereupon Arabella woke. She knew in her dreamthat it was not to the living she spoke. "--In five years, within amonth of their completion--I had forgotten the date of the dream, andsupposed it was only three years ago, and that two had still to run. Only a coincidence, but noticeable. . . . '

In August he writes again from Audierne, Finisterre (Brittany). 

'. . . You never heard of this place, I daresay. After staying afew days at Paris we started for Rennes, --reached Caen and halted alittle--thence made for Auray, where we made excursions to Carnac, Lokmariaker, and Ste. -Anne d'Auray; all very interesting of their kind;then saw Brest, Morlaix, St. -Pol de Leon, and the sea-port Roscoff, --ourintended bathing place--it was full of folk, however, and otherwiseimpracticable, so we had nothing for it, but to "rebrousser chemin" andget to the south-west again. At Quimper we heard (for a second time)that Audierne would suit us exactly, and to it we came--happily, for"suit" it certainly does. Look on the map for the most westerly pointof Bretagne--and of the mainland of Europe--there is niched Audierne, adelightful quite unspoiled little fishing-town, with the open ocean infront, and beautiful woods, hills and dales, meadows and lanes behindand around, --sprinkled here and there with villages each with its fineold Church. Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours' walkin the course of which we visited a town, Pont Croix, with a beautifulcathedral-like building amid the cluster of clean bright Bretonhouses, --and a little farther is another church, "Notre Dame deComfort", with only a hovel or two round it, worth the journey fromEngland to see; we are therefore very well off--at an inn, I should say, with singularly good, kind, and liberal people, so have no cares for themoment. May you be doing as well! The weather has been most propitious, and to-day is perfect to a wish. We bathe, but somewhat ingloriously, ina smooth creek of mill-pond quietude, (there being no cabins on the bayitself, ) unlike the great rushing waves of Croisic--the water is muchcolder. . . . '

The tribute contained in this letter to the merits of le PereBatifoulier and his wife would not, I think, be endorsed by the fewother English travellers who have stayed at their inn. The writer'sown genial and kindly spirit no doubt partly elicited, and still moresupplied, the qualities he saw in them. 

The six-volume, so long known as 'uniform' edition of Mr. Browning'sworks, was brought out in the autumn of this year by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. ; practically Mr. George Murray Smith, who was to bethenceforward his exclusive publisher and increasingly valued friend. Inthe winter months appeared the first two volumes (to be followed in theensuing spring by the third and fourth) of 'The Ring and the Book'. 

With 'The Ring and the Book' Mr. Browning attained the full recognitionof his genius. The 'Athenaeum' spoke of it as the 'opus magnum' ofthe generation; not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poeticachievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritualtreasure that England had produced since the days of Shakespeare. His popularity was yet to come, so also the widespread reading of hishitherto neglected poems; but henceforth whatever he published was sureof ready acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation. The ground had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in anotherletter to Miss Blagden shows that, when 'The Ring and the Book'appeared, a high place was already awaiting it outside those higheracademic circles in which its author's position was secured. 

'. . . I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me prettyoffers for it. One sent to propose, last week, to publish it at hisrisk, giving me _all_ the profits, and pay me the whole in advance--"forthe incidental advantages of my name"--the R. B. Who for six monthsonce did not sell one copy of the poems! I ask 200 Pounds for the sheetsto America, and shall get it. . . . '

His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interestin his productions; and we may fairly credit 'Dramatis Personae' withhaving finally awakened his countrymen of all classes to the fact that agreat creative power had arisen among them. 'The Ring and the Book'and 'Dramatis Personae' cannot indeed be dissociated in what was theculminating moment in the author's poetic life, even more thanthe zenith of his literary career. In their expression of all thatconstituted the wide range and the characteristic quality of his genius, they at once support and supplement each other. But a fact of moredistinctive biographical interest connects itself exclusively with thelater work. 

We cannot read the emotional passages of 'The Ring and the Book' withouthearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning's own: an echo, notof his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past must haveaccompanied him through every stage of the great work. Its subject hadcome to him in the last days of his greatest happiness. It had livedwith him, though in the background of consciousness, through those ofhis keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime, in which asubsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation. He knew thejoy with which his wife would have witnessed the diligent performanceof this his self-imposed task. The beautiful dedication contained in thefirst and last books was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning'sspiritual presence on this occasion was more than a presiding memory ofthe heart. I am convinced that it entered largely into the conceptionof 'Pompilia', and, so far as this depended on it, the character of thewhole work. In the outward course of her history, Mr. Browning proceededstrictly on the ground of fact. His dramatic conscience would not haveallowed it otherwise. He had read the record of the case, as he hasbeen heard to say, fully eight times over before converting it into thesubstance of his poem; and the form in which he finally cast it, wasthat which recommended itself to him as true--which, within certainlimits, _was_ true. The testimony of those who watched by Pompilia'sdeath-bed is almost conclusive as to the absence of any criminal motiveto her flight, or criminal circumstance connected with it. Its timeproved itself to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly expectedmotherhood, and may have had some reference to this fact. But the realPompilia was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my memory muchdeceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the historicaldefence of her flight. If it appeared there at all, it was as a merelypractical incentive to her striving to place herself in safety. Thesudden rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering ofthe case, becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her ageand her culture; it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is morestriking, it was not a natural development of Mr. Browning's imaginationconcerning them. 

The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature--a fact whichrenders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son; it findslittle or no expression in his work. The apotheosis of motherhood whichhe puts forth through the aged priest in 'Ivan Ivanovitch' was due tothe poetic necessity of lifting a ghastly human punishment into thesphere of Divine retribution. Even in the advancing years whichsoften the father into the grandfather, the essential quality of earlychildhood was not that which appealed to him. He would admire itsflower-like beauty, but not linger over it. He had no special emotionfor its helplessness. When he was attracted by a child it was throughthe evidence of something not only distinct from, but opposed to this. 'It is the soul' (I see) 'in that speck of a body, ' he said, not manyyears ago, of a tiny boy--now too big for it to be desirable that Ishould mention his name, but whose mother, if she reads this, will knowto whom I allude--who had delighted him by an act of intelligent gracewhich seemed beyond his years. The ingenuously unbounded maternal pride, the almost luscious maternal sentiment, of Pompilia's dying momentscan only associate themselves in our mind with Mrs. Browning's personalutterances, and some notable passages in 'Casa Guidi Windows'and 'Aurora Leigh'. Even the exalted fervour of the invocation toCaponsacchi, its blending of spiritual ecstasy with half-realizedearthly emotion, has, I think, no parallel in her husband's work. 

'Pompilia' bears, still, unmistakably, the stamp of her author's genius. Only he could have imagined her peculiar form of consciousness; herchildlike, wondering, yet subtle, perception of the anomalies of life. He has raised the woman in her from the typical to the individual bythis distinguishing touch of his supreme originality; and thus infusedinto her character a haunting pathos which renders it to many readersthe most exquisite in the whole range of his creations. For othersat the same time, it fails in the impressiveness because it lacks thereality which habitually marks them. 

So much, however, is certain: Mr. Browning would never have acceptedthis 'murder story' as the subject of a poem, if he could not in somesense have made it poetical. It was only in an idealized Pompilia thatthe material for such a process could be found. We owe it, therefore, tothe one departure from his usual mode of dramatic conception, that thePoet's masterpiece has been produced. I know no other instance of whatcan be even mistaken for reflected inspiration in the whole range of hiswork, the given passages in 'Pauline' excepted. 

The postscript of a letter to Frederic Leighton written so far back asOctober 17, 1864, is interesting in its connection with the preliminarystages of this great undertaking. 

'A favour, if you have time for it. Go into the church St. Lorenzo inLucina in the Corso--and look attentively at it--so as to describe itto me on your return. The general arrangement of the building, if with anave--pillars or not--the number of altars, and any particularity theremay be--over the High Altar is a famous Crucifixion by Guido. It will beof great use to me. I don't care about the _outsid_. '

Chapter 16

1869-1873

Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower--Scotland; Visit to Lady Ashburton--Lettersto Miss Blagden--St. -Aubin; The Franco-Prussian War--'HerveRiel'--Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith--'Balaustion's Adventure'; 'PrinceHohenstiel-Schwangau'--'Fifine at the Fair'--Mistaken Theories of Mr. Browning's Work--St. -Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. 

From 1869 to 1871 Mr. Browning published nothing; but in April 1870he wrote the sonnet called 'Helen's Tower', a beautiful tribute to thememory of Helen, mother of Lord Dufferin, suggested by the memorialtower which her son was erecting to her on his estate at Clandeboye. Thesonnet appeared in 1883, in the 'Pall Mall Gazette', and was reprintedin 1886, in 'Sonnets of the Century', edited by Mr. Sharp; and againin the fifth part of the Browning Society's 'Papers'; but it is still Ithink sufficiently little known to justify its reproduction. 

 Who hears of Helen's Tower may dream perchance How the Greek Beauty from the Scaean Gate Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. 

 Hearts would leap otherwise at thy advance, Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate! Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance. 

 The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange; A transitory shame of long ago; It dies into the sand from which it sprang; But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear no change. God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, When all the morning-stars together sang. 

April 26, 1870. 

Lord Dufferin is a warm admirer of Mr. Browning's genius. He also heldhim in strong personal regard. 

In the summer of 1869 the poet, with his sister and son, changed themanner of his holiday, by joining Mr. Story and his family in a tour inScotland, and a visit to Louisa, Lady Ashburton, at Loch Luichart Lodge;but in the August of 1870 he was again in the primitive atmosphere of aFrench fishing village, though one which had little to recommend it butthe society of a friend; it was M. Milsand's St. -Aubin. He had written, February 24, to Miss Blagden, under the one inspiration which naturallyrecurred in his correspondence with her. 

'. . . So you, too, think of Naples for an eventual resting-place! Yes, that is the proper basking-ground for "bright and aged snakes. " Florencewould be irritating, and, on the whole, insufferable--Yet I never hearof any one going thither but my heart is twitched. There is a good, charming, little singing German lady, Miss Regan, who told me the otherday that she was just about revisiting her aunt, Madame Sabatier, whomyou may know, or know of--and I felt as if I should immensely like toglide, for a long summer-day through the streets and between the oldstone-walls, --unseen come and unheard go--perhaps by some miracle, Ishall do so--and look up at Villa Brichieri as Arnold's Gypsy-Scholargave one wistful look at "the line of festal light in Christ ChurchHall, " before he went to sleep in some forgotten grange. . . . I am soglad I can be comfortable in your comfort. I fancy exactly how you feeland see how you live: it _is_ the Villa Geddes of old days, I find. I wellremember the fine view from the upper room--that looking down the steephill, by the side of which runs the road you describe--that path wasalways my preferred walk, for its shortness (abruptness) and the fineold wall to your left (from the Villa) which is overgrown with weeds andwild flowers--violets and ground-ivy, I remember. Oh, me! to findmyself some late sunshiny Sunday afternoon, with my face turned toFlorence--"ten minutes to the gate, ten minutes _home_!" I think I shouldfairly end it all on the spot. . . . '

He writes again from St. -Aubin, August 19, 1870:

'Dearest Isa, --Your letter came prosperously to this little wild place, where we have been, Sarianna and myself, just a week. Milsand lives in acottage with a nice bit of garden, two steps off, and we occupy anotherof the most primitive kind on the sea-shore--which shore is a good sandystretch for miles and miles on either side. I don't think we were everquite so thoroughly washed by the sea-air from all quarters as here--theweather is fine, and we do well enough. The sadness of the war and itsconsequences go far to paralyse all our pleasure, however. . . . 

'Well, you are at Siena--one of the places I love best to remember. Youare returned--or I would ask you to tell me how the Villa Alberti wears, and if the fig-tree behind the house is green and strong yet. I havea pen-and-ink drawing of it, dated and signed the last day Ba was everthere--"my fig tree--" she used to sit under it, reading and writing. Nine years, or ten rather, since then! Poor old Landor's oak, too, and his cottage, ought not to be forgotten. Exactly opposite thishouse, --just over the way of the water, --shines every night thelight-house of Havre--a place I know well, and love very moderately:but it always gives me a thrill as I see afar, _exactly_ a particular spotwhich I was at along with her. At this moment, I see the white streak ofthe phare in the sun, from the window where I write and I _think_. . . . Milsand went to Paris last week, just before we arrived, to transporthis valuables to a safer place than his house, which is near thefortifications. He is filled with as much despondency as can be--whilethe old dear and perfect kindness remains. I never knew or shall knowhis like among men. . . . '

The war did more than sadden Mr. And Miss Browning's visit to St. -Aubin;it opposed unlooked-for difficulties to their return home. They hadremained, unconscious of the impending danger, till Sedan had beentaken, the Emperor's downfall proclaimed, and the country suddenlyplaced in a state of siege. One morning M. Milsand came to them inanxious haste, and insisted on their starting that very day. An order, he said, had been issued that no native should leave the country, andit only needed some unusually thick-headed Maire for Mr. Browning to bearrested as a runaway Frenchman or a Prussian spy. The usual passengerboats from Calais and Boulogne no longer ran; but there was, hebelieved, a chance of their finding one at Havre. They acted on thiswarning, and discovered its wisdom in the various hindrances which theyfound on their way. Everywhere the horses had been requisitioned for thewar. The boat on which they had relied to take them down the riverto Caen had been stopped that very morning; and when they reached therailroad they were told that the Prussians would be at the other endbefore night. At last they arrived at Honfleur, where they found anEnglish vessel which was about to convey cattle to Southampton; and inthis, setting out at midnight, they made their passage to England. 

Some words addressed to Miss Blagden, written I believe in 1871, oncemore strike a touching familiar note. 

'. . . But _no_, dearest Isa. The simple truth is that _she_ was the poet, and I the clever person by comparison--remember her limited experienceof all kinds, and what she made of it. Remember on the other hand, howmy uninterrupted health and strength and practice with the world havehelped me. . . . '

'Balaustion's Adventure' and 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' werepublished, respectively, in August and December 1871. They had beenpreceded in the March of the same year by a ballad, 'Herve Riel', afterwards reprinted in the 'Pacchiarotto' volume, and which Mr. Browning now sold to the 'Cornhill Magazine' for the benefit of theFrench sufferers by the war. 

The circumstances of this little transaction, unique in Mr. Browning'sexperience, are set forth in the following letter:

Feb. 4, '71. 

'My dear Smith, --I want to give something to the people in Paris, andcan afford so very little just now, that I am forced upon an expedient. Will you buy of me that poem which poor Simeon praised in a letteryou saw, and which I like better than most things I have done oflate?--Buy, --I mean, --the right of printing it in the Pall Mall and, if you please, the Cornhill also, --the copyright remaining with me. Youremember you wanted to print it in the Cornhill, and I was obstinate:there is hardly any occasion on which I should be otherwise, if theprinting any poem of mine in a magazine were purely for my own sake: so, any liberality you exercise will not be drawn into a precedent againstyou. I fancy this is a case in which one may handsomely puff one's ownware, and I venture to call my verses good for once. I send them toyou directly, because expedition will render whatever I contribute morevaluable: for when you make up your mind as to how liberally I shall beenabled to give, you must send me a cheque and I will send the same asthe "Product of a Poem"--so that your light will shine deservedly. Now, begin proceedings by reading the poem to Mrs. Smith, --by whose judgmentI will cheerfully be bound; and, with her approval, second my endeavouras best you can. Would, --for the love of France, --that this were a "Songof a Wren"--then should the guineas equal the lines; as it is, do whatyou safely may for the song of a Robin--Browning--who is yours verytruly, into the bargain. 

'P. S. The copy is so clear and careful that you might, with a goodReader, print it on Monday, nor need my help for corrections: I shallhowever be always at home, and ready at a moment's notice: return thecopy, if you please, as I promised it to my son long ago. '

Mr. Smith gave him 100 guineas as the price of the poem. 

He wrote concerning the two longer poems, first probably at the close ofthis year, and again in January 1872, to Miss Blagden. 

'. . . By this time you have got my little book ('Hohenstiel') and seenfor yourself whether I make the best or worst of the case. I think, inthe main, he meant to do what I say, and, but for weakness, --grown moreapparent in his last years than formerly, --would have done what I say hedid not. * I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, _et pourcause_: better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made, andgave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in thelast miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers' best. I amtold my little thing is succeeding--sold 1, 400 in the first five days, and before any notice appeared. I remember that the year I made thelittle rough sketch in Rome, '60, my account for the last six monthswith Chapman was--_nil_, not one copy disposed of! . . . 

 * This phrase is a little misleading. 

'. . . I am glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh calls myeulogium on the second empire, --which it is not, any more than whatanother wiseacre affirms it to be "a scandalous attack on the oldconstant friend of England"--it is just what I imagine the man might, ifhe pleased, say for himself. '

Mr. Browning continues:

'Spite of my ailments and bewailments I have just all but finishedanother poem of quite another kind, which shall amuse you in the spring, I hope! I don't go sound asleep at all events. 'Balaustion'--the secondedition is in the press I think I told you. 2, 500 in five months, is agood sale for the likes of me. But I met Henry Taylor (of Artevelde)two days ago at dinner, and he said he had never gained anything by hisbooks, which surely is a shame--I mean, if no buyers mean noreaders. . . . '

'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' was written in Scotland, where Mr. Browning was the guest of Mr. Ernest Benzon: having left his sister tothe care of M. And Madame Milsand at St. -Aubin. The ailment he speaksof consisted, I believe, of a severe cold. Another of the occurrencesof 1871 was Mr. Browning's election as Life Governor of the LondonUniversity. 

A passage from a letter dated March 30, '72, bears striking testimony tothe constant warmth of his affections. 

'. . . The misfortune, which I did not guess when I accepted theinvitation, is that I shall lose some of the last days of Milsand, whohas been here for the last month: no words can express the love I havefor him, you know. He is increasingly precious to me. . . . Waringcame back the other day, after thirty years' absence, the same asever, --nearly. He has been Prime Minister at New Zealand for a year anda half, but gets tired, and returns home with a poem. '*

 * 'Ranolf and Amohia'. 

This is my last extract from the correspondence with Miss Blagden. Herdeath closed it altogether within the year. 

It is difficult to infer from letters, however intimate, the dominantstate of the writer's mind: most of all to do so in Mr. Browning's case, from such passages of his correspondence as circumstances allow meto quote. Letters written in intimacy, and to the same friend, oftenexpress a recurrent mood, a revived set of associations, which for themoment destroys the habitual balance of feeling. The same effect issometimes produced in personal intercourse; and the more varied thelife, the more versatile the nature, the more readily in either casewill a lately unused spring of emotion well up at the passing touch. We may even fancy we read into the letters of 1870 that eerie, hauntingsadness of a cherished memory from which, in spite of ourselves, lifeis bearing us away. We may also err in so doing. But literary creation, patiently carried on through a given period, is usually a fairreflection of the general moral and mental conditions under which it hastaken place; and it would be hard to imagine from Mr. Browning's workduring these last ten years that any but gracious influences had beenoperating upon his genius, any more disturbing element than the sense ofprivation and loss had entered into his inner life. 

Some leaven of bitterness must, nevertheless, have been working withinhim, or he could never have produced that piece of perplexing cynicism, 'Fifine at the Fair'--the poem referred to as in progress in a letter toMiss Blagden, and which appeared in the spring of 1872. The disturbingcause had been also of long standing; for the deeper reactive processesof Mr. Browning's nature were as slow as its more superficial responsewas swift; and while 'Dramatis Personae', 'The Ring and the Book', and even 'Balaustion's Adventure', represented the gradually perfectedsubstance of his poetic imagination, 'Fifine at the Fair' was as thefroth thrown up by it during the prolonged simmering which was to leaveit clear. The work displays the iridescent brightness as well as theoccasional impurity of this froth-like character. Beauty and uglinessare, indeed, almost inseparable in the moral impression which it leavesupon us. The author has put forth a plea for self-indulgence with amuch slighter attempt at dramatic disguise than his special pleadingsgenerally assume; and while allowing circumstances to expose thesophistry of the position, and punish its attendant act, he does notsufficiently condemn it. But, in identifying himself for the moment withthe conception of a Don Juan, he has infused into it a tenderness anda poetry with which the true type had very little in common, and whichretard its dramatic development. Those who knew Mr. Browning, or whothoroughly know his work, may censure, regret, fail to understand'Fifine at the Fair'; they will never in any important sense misconstrueit. 

But it has been so misconstrued by an intelligent and not unsympatheticcritic; and his construction may be endorsed by other persons in thepresent, and still more in the future, in whom the elements of a truerjudgment are wanting. It seems, therefore, best to protest at onceagainst the misjudgment, though in so doing I am claiming for it anattention which it may not seem to deserve. I allude to Mr. Mortimer's'Note on Browning' in the 'Scottish Art Review' for December 1889. Thisnote contains a summary of Mr. Browning's teaching, which it resolvesinto the moral equivalent of the doctrine of the conservation of force. Mr. Mortimer assumes for the purpose of his comparison that the exerciseof force means necessarily moving on; and according to him Mr. Browningprescribes action at any price, even that of defying the restrictionsof moral law. He thus, we are told, blames the lovers in 'The Statue andthe Bust' for their failure to carry out what was an immoral intention;and, in the person of his 'Don Juan', defends a husband's claim torelieve the fixity of conjugal affection by varied adventure in theworld of temporary loves: the result being 'the negation of thatconvention under which we habitually view life, but which for somereason or other breaks down when we have to face the problems of aGoethe, a Shelley, a Byron, or a Browning. '

Mr. Mortimer's generalization does not apply to 'The Statue and theBust', since Mr. Browning has made it perfectly clear that, in thiscase, the intended act is postponed without reference to its morality, and simply in consequence of a weakness of will, which would have beenas paralyzing to a good purpose as it was to the bad one; but it is notwithout superficial sanction in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and the part whichthe author allowed himself to play in it did him an injustice only to bemeasured by the inference which it has been made to support. There couldbe no mistake more ludicrous, were it less regrettable, than that ofclassing Mr. Browning, on moral grounds, with Byron or Shelley; evenin the case of Goethe the analogy breaks down. The evidence of theforegoing pages has rendered all protest superfluous. But the suggestedmoral resemblance to the two English poets receives a striking commentin a fact of Mr. Browning's life which falls practically into thepresent period of our history: his withdrawal from Shelley of thedevotion of more than forty years on account of an act of heartlessnesstowards his first wife which he held to have been proved against him. 

The sweet and the bitter lay, indeed, very close to each other at thesources of Mr. Browning's inspiration. Both proceeded, in great measure, from his spiritual allegiance to the past--that past by which it wasimpossible that he should linger, but which he could not yet leavebehind. The present came to him with friendly greeting. He wasunconsciously, perhaps inevitably, unjust to what it brought. Theinjustice reacted upon himself, and developed by degrees into thecynical mood of fancy which became manifest in 'Fifine at the Fair'. 

It is true that, in the light of this explanation, we see an effect veryunlike its cause; but the chemistry of human emotion is like that ofnatural life. It will often form a compound in which neither of itsconstituents can be recognized. This perverse poem was the last as wellas the first manifestation of an ungenial mood of Mr. Browning's mind. A slight exception may be made for some passages in 'Red Cotton NightcapCountry', and for one of the poems of the 'Pacchiarotto' volume; butotherwise no sign of moral or mental disturbance betrays itself in hissubsequent work. The past and the present gradually assumed for him amore just relation to each other. He learned to meet life as it offereditself to him with a more frank recognition of its good gifts, a moregrateful response to them. He grew happier, hence more genial, as theyears advanced. 

It was not without misgiving that Mr. Browning published 'Fifine atthe Fair'; but many years were to pass before he realized the kind ofcriticism to which it had exposed him. The belief conveyed in theletter to Miss Blagden that what proceeds from a genuine inspiration isjustified by it, combined with the indifference to public opinionwhich had been engendered in him by its long neglect, made him slow toanticipate the results of external judgment, even where he was in somedegree prepared to endorse them. For his value as a poet, it was bestso. 

The August of 1872 and of 1873 again found him with his sister atSt. -Aubin, and the earlier visit was an important one: since it suppliedhim with the materials of his next work, of which Miss Annie Thackeray, there also for a few days, suggested the title. The tragic drama whichforms the subject of Mr. Browning's poem had been in great part enactedin the vicinity of St. -Aubin; and the case of disputed inheritance towhich it had given rise was pending at that moment in the tribunals ofCaen. The prevailing impression left on Miss Thackeray's mind by thisprimitive district was, she declared, that of white cotton nightcaps(the habitual headgear of the Normandy peasants). She engaged to writea story called 'White Cotton Nightcap Country'; and Mr. Browning's quicksense of both contrast and analogy inspired the introduction ofthis emblem of repose into his own picture of that peaceful, prosaicexistence, and of the ghastly spiritual conflict to which it had servedas background. He employed a good deal of perhaps strained ingenuity inthe opening pages of the work, in making the white cap foreshadow thered, itself the symbol of liberty, and only indirectly connected withtragic events; and he would, I think, have emphasized the irony ofcircumstance in a manner more characteristic of himself, if he had laidhis stress on the remoteness from 'the madding crowd', and repeatedMiss Thackeray's title. There can, however, be no doubt that his poeticimagination, no less than his human insight, was amply vindicated by histreatment of the story. 

On leaving St. -Aubin he spent a month at Fontainebleau, in a housesituated on the outskirts of the forest; and here his principal indooroccupation was reading the Greek dramatists, especially Aeschylus, towhom he had returned with revived interest and curiosity. 'Red CottonNightcap Country' was not begun till his return to London in the laterautumn. It was published in the early summer of 1873. 

Chapter 17

1873-1878

London Life--Love of Music--Miss Egerton-Smith--Periodical NervousExhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes' Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'TheInn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and other Poems'--Visits to Oxford andCambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St. Andrews; Letterfrom Professor Knight--In the Savoyard Mountains--Death of MissEgerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of Croisic'--Selections fromhis Works. 

The period on which we have now entered, covering roughly the ten ortwelve years which followed the publication of 'The Ring and the Book', was the fullest in Mr. Browning's life; it was that in which the variedclaims made by it on his moral, and above all his physical energies, found in him the fullest power of response. He could rise early and goto bed late--this, however, never from choice; and occupy every hour ofthe day with work or pleasure, in a manner which his friends recalledregretfully in later years, when of two or three engagements whichought to have divided his afternoon, a single one--perhaps only the mostformally pressing--could be fulfilled. Soon after his final return toEngland, while he still lived in comparative seclusion, certain habitsof friendly intercourse, often superficial, but always binding, hadrooted themselves in his life. London society, as I have also implied, opened itself to him in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truerto say, drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even beforethe mellowing kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the leastsubstantial of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of thepoet--for a while the natural ambition of the man--found satisfaction init. For a short time, indeed, he entered into the fashionable routine ofcountry-house visiting. Besides the instances I have already given, and many others which I may have forgotten, he was heard of, during theearlier part of this decade, as the guest of Lord Carnarvon at HighclereCastle, of Lord Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, of Lord Brownlow and hismother, Lady Marian Alford, at Belton and Ashridge. Somewhat later, he stayed with Mr. And Lady Alice Gaisford at a house they temporarilyoccupied on the Sussex downs; with Mr. Cholmondeley at Condover, and, much more recently, at Aynhoe Park with Mr. And Mrs. Cartwright. Kindand pressing, and in themselves very tempting invitations of this naturecame to him until the end of his life; but he very soon made a practiceof declining them, because their acceptance could only renew for him thefatigues of the London season, while the tantalizing beauty andrepose of the country lay before his eyes; but such visits, while theycontinued, were one of the necessary social experiences which broughttheir grist to his mill. 

And now, in addition to the large social tribute which he received, andhad to pay, he was drinking in all the enjoyment, and incurring all thefatigue which the London musical world could create for him. In Italyhe had found the natural home of the other arts. The one poem, 'OldPictures in Florence', is sufficiently eloquent of long communion withthe old masters and their works; and if his history in Florence and Romehad been written in his own letters instead of those of his wife, theymust have held many reminiscences of galleries and studios, and of theplaces in which pictures are bought and sold. But his love for musicwas as certainly starved as the delight in painting and sculpture wasnourished; and it had now grown into a passion, from the indulgence ofwhich he derived, as he always declared, some of the most beneficentinfluences of his life. It would be scarcely an exaggeration to say thathe attended every important concert of the season, whether isolated orgiven in a course. There was no engagement possible or actual, which didnot yield to the discovery of its clashing with the day and hour fixedfor one of these. His frequent companion on such occasions was MissEgerton-Smith. 

Miss Smith became only known to Mr. Browning's general acquaintancethrough the dedicatory 'A. E. S. ' of 'La Saisiaz'; but she was, at thetime of her death, one of his oldest women friends. He first met her asa young woman in Florence when she was visiting there; and the lovefor and proficiency in music soon asserted itself as a bond of sympathybetween them. They did not, however, see much of each other till he hadfinally left Italy, and she also had made her home in London. She thereled a secluded life, although free from family ties, and enjoying alarge income derived from the ownership of an important provincialpaper. Mr. Browning was one of the very few persons whose society shecared to cultivate; and for many years the common musical interest tookthe practical, and for both of them convenient form, of their going toconcerts together. After her death, in the autumn of 1877, he almostmechanically renounced all the musical entertainments to which she hadso regularly accompanied him. The special motive and special facilitywere gone--she had been wont to call for him in her carriage; thehabit was broken; there would have been first pain, and afterwards anunwelcome exertion in renewing it. Time was also beginning to sap hisstrength, while society, and perhaps friendship, were making increasingclaims upon it. It may have been for this same reason that music aftera time seemed to pass out of his life altogether. Yet its almost suddeneclipse was striking in the case of one who not only had been sodeeply susceptible to its emotional influences, so conversant withits scientific construction and its multitudinous forms, but who wasacknowledged as 'musical' by those who best knew the subtle and complexmeaning of that often misused term. 

Mr. Browning could do all that I have said during the period throughwhich we are now following him; but he could not quite do it withimpunity. Each winter brought its searching attack of cold and cough;each summer reduced him to the state of nervous prostration or physicalapathy of which I have already spoken, and which at once rendered changeimperative, and the exertion of seeking it almost intolerable. Hishealth and spirits rebounded at the first draught of foreign air; thefirst breath from an English cliff or moor might have had the sameresult. But the remembrance of this fact never nerved him to thepreliminary effort. The conviction renewed itself with the close ofevery season, that the best thing which could happen to him would be tobe left quiet at home; and his disinclination to face even the ideaof moving equally hampered his sister in her endeavour to make timelyarrangements for their change of abode. 

This special craving for rest helped to limit the area from which theirsummer resort could be chosen. It precluded all idea of 'pension'-life, hence of any much-frequented spot in Switzerland or Germany. It wastacitly understood that the shortening days were not to be passed inEngland. Italy did not yet associate itself with the possibilities ofa moderately short absence; the resources of the northern French coastwere becoming exhausted; and as the August of 1874 approached, thequestion of how and where this and the following months were to be spentwas, perhaps, more than ever a perplexing one. It was now Miss Smith whobecame the means of its solution. She had more than once joined Mr. AndMiss Browning at the seaside. She was anxious this year to do so again, and she suggested for their meeting a quiet spot called Mers, almostadjoining the fashionable Treport, but distinct from it. It was agreedthat they should try it; and the experiment, which they had no reasonto regret, opened also in some degree a way out of future difficulties. Mers was young, and had the defect of its quality. Only one desirablehouse was to be found there; and the plan of joint residence becameconverted into one of joint housekeeping, in which Mr. And Miss Browningat first refused to concur, but which worked so well that it was renewedin the three ensuing summers: Miss Smith retaining the initiative inthe choice of place, her friends the right of veto upon it. They stayedagain together in 1875 at Villers, on the coast of Normandy; in 1876 atthe Isle of Arran; in 1877 at a house called La Saisiaz--Savoyard forthe sun--in the Saleve district near Geneva. 

The autumn months of 1874 were marked for Mr. Browning by an importantpiece of work: the production of 'Aristophanes' Apology'. It was faradvanced when he returned to London in November, after a visit toAntwerp, where his son was studying art under M. Heyermans; and its muchlater appearance must have been intended to give breathing time to thereaders of 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'. Mr. Browning subsequentlyadmitted that he sometimes, during these years, allowed active literaryoccupation to interfere too much with the good which his holiday mighthave done him; but the temptations to literary activity were this timetoo great to be withstood. The house occupied by him at Mers (MaisonRobert) was the last of the straggling village, and stood on a risingcliff. In front was the open sea; beyond it a long stretch of down;everywhere comparative solitude. Here, in uninterrupted quiet, and in aroom devoted to his use, Mr. Browning would work till the afternoon wasadvanced, and then set forth on a long walk over the cliffs, often inthe face of a wind which, as he wrote of it at the time, he could leanagainst as if it were a wall. And during this time he was living, notonly in his work, but with the man who had inspired it. The image ofAristophanes, in the half-shamed insolence, the disordered majesty, inwhich he is placed before the reader's mind, was present to him fromthe first moment in which the Defence was conceived. What was still moreinteresting, he could see him, hear him, think with him, speak for him, and still inevitably condemn him. No such instance of always ingenious, and sometimes earnest pleading foredoomed to complete discomfiture, occurs in Mr. Browning's works. 

To Aristophanes he gave the dramatic sympathy which one lover of lifecan extend to another, though that other unduly extol its lower forms. To Euripides he brought the palm of the higher truth, to his work thetribute of the more pathetic human emotion. Even these for a momentministered to the greatness of Aristophanes, in the tear shed by him tothe memory of his rival, in the hour of his own triumph; and we may bequite sure that when Mr. Browning depicted that scene, and again when hetranslated the great tragedian's words, his own eyes were dimmed. Largetears fell from them, and emotion choked his voice, when he firstread aloud the transcript of the 'Herakles' to a friend, who was oftenprivileged to hear him. 

Mr. Browning's deep feeling for the humanities of Greek literature, andhis almost passionate love for the language, contrasted strongly withhis refusal to regard even the first of Greek writers as models ofliterary style. The pretensions raised for them on this ground wereinconceivable to him; and his translation of the 'Agamemnon', published1877, was partly made, I am convinced, for the pleasure of exposingthese claims, and of rebuking them. His preface to the transcript givesevidence of this. The glee with which he pointed to it when it firstappeared was no less significant. 

At Villers, in 1875, he only corrected the proofs of 'The Inn Album' forpublication in November. When the party started for the Isle of Arran, in the autumn of 1876, the 'Pacchiarotto' volume had already appeared. 

When Mr. Browning discontinued his short-lived habit of visiting awayfrom home, he made an exception in favour of the Universities. Hisoccasional visits to Oxford and Cambridge were maintained till the veryend of his life, with increasing frequency in the former case; and thedays spent at Balliol and Trinity afforded him as unmixed a pleasureas was compatible with the interruption of his daily habits, and with asystem of hospitality which would detain him for many hours at table. A vivid picture of them is given in two letters, dated January 20 andMarch 10, 1877, and addressed to one of his constant correspondents, Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of Shalstone Manor, Buckingham. 

Dear Friend, I have your letter of yesterday, and thank you all I canfor its goodness and graciousness to me unworthy . . . I returned onThursday--the hospitality of our Master being not easy to set aside. But to begin with the beginning: the passage from London to Oxford wasexceptionally prosperous--the train was full of men my friends. I waswelcomed on arriving by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms, --thencame the pleasant meeting with Jowett who at once took me to tea withhis other guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London, Deanof Westminster, the Airlies, Cardwells, male and female. Then came thebanquet--(I enclose you the plan having no doubt that you will recognisethe name of many an acquaintance: please return it)--and, the dinnerdone, speechifying set in vigorously. The Archbishop proposed thestanding 'Floreat domus de Balliolo'--to which the Master made dueand amusing answer, himself giving the health of the Primate. LordColeridge, in a silvery speech, drank to the University, responded to bythe Vice-Chancellor. I forget who proposed the visitors--the Bishop ofLondon, perhaps Lord Cardwell. Professor Smith gave the two Housesof Parliament, --Jowett, the Clergy, coupling with it the name of yourfriend Mr. Rogers--on whom he showered every kind of praise, and Mr. Rogers returned thanks very characteristically and pleasantly. LordLansdowne drank to the Bar (Mr. Bowen), Lord Camperdown to--I reallyforget what: Mr. Green to Literature and Science delivering a mostundeserved eulogium on myself, with a more rightly directed one onArnold, Swinburne, and the old pride of Balliol, Clough: this wascleverly and almost touchingly answered by dear Mat Arnold. Then theDean of Westminster gave the Fellows and Scholars--and then--twelveo'clock struck. We were, counting from the time of preliminaryassemblage, six hours and a half engaged: _fully_ five and a half nailedto our chairs at the table: but the whole thing was brilliant, genial, and suggestive of many and various thoughts to me--and there wasa warmth, earnestness, and yet refinement about it which I neverexperienced in any previous public dinner. Next morning I breakfastedwith Jowett and his guests, found that return would be difficult: whileas the young men were to return on Friday there would be no oppositionto my departure on Thursday. The morning was dismal with rain, but afterluncheon there was a chance of getting a little air, and I walked formore than two hours, then heard service in New Coll. --then dinner again:my room had been prepared in the Master's house. So, on Thursday, afteryet another breakfast, I left by the noon-day train, after all sorts ofkindly offices from the Master. . . . No reporters were suffered to bepresent--the account in yesterday's Times was furnished by one or moreof the guests; it is quite correct as far as it goes. There were, I find, certain little paragraphs which must have been furnished by'guessers': Swinburne, set down as present--was absent through hisFather's illness: the Cardinal also excused himself as did the Bishop ofSalisbury and others. . . . Ever yours R. Browning. 

The second letter, from Cambridge, was short and written in haste, atthe moment of Mr. Browning's departure; but it tells the same tale ofgeneral kindness and attention. Engagements for no less than six mealshad absorbed the first day of the visit. The occasion was that ofProfessor Joachim's investiture with his Doctor's degree; and Mr. Browning declares that this ceremony, the concert given by the greatviolinist, and his society, were 'each and all' worth the trouble ofthe journey. He himself was to receive the Cambridge degree of LL. D. In1879, the Oxford D. C. L. In 1882. A passage in another letter addressedto the same friend, refers probably to a practical reminiscence of 'RedCotton Nightcap Country', which enlivened the latter experience, andwhich Mrs. Fitz-Gerald had witnessed with disapprobation. *

 * An actual red cotton nightcap had been made to flutter down on to the Poet's head. 

. . . You are far too hard on the very harmless drolleries of the youngmen, licensed as they are moreover by immemorial usage. Indeed thereused to be a regularly appointed jester, 'Filius Terrae' he was called, whose business it was to jibe and jeer at the honoured ones, by way ofreminder that all human glories are merely gilded bubbles and must notbe fancied metal. You saw that the Reverend Dons escaped no more thanthe poor Poet--or rather I should say than myself the poor Poet--forI was pleased to observe with what attention they listened to theNewdigate. . . . Ever affectionately yours, R. Browning. 

In 1875 he was unanimously nominated by its Independent Club, to theoffice of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1877 he againreceived the offer of the Rectorship of St. Andrews, couched in veryurgent and flattering terms. A letter addressed to him from thisUniversity by Dr. William Knight, Professor of Moral Philosophy there, which I have his permission to publish, bears witness to what hadlong been and was always to remain a prominent fact of Mr. Browning'sliterary career: his great influence on the minds of the risinggeneration of his countrymen. 

The University, St. Andrews N. B. : Nov. 17, 1877. 

My dear Sir, --. . . The students of this University, in which I havethe honour to hold office, have nominated you as their Lord Rector; andintend unanimously, I am told, to elect you to that office on Thursday. 

I believe that hitherto no Rector has been chosen by the undividedsuffrage of any Scottish University. They have heard however that youare unable to accept the office: and your committee, who were deeplydisappointed to learn this afternoon of the way in which you have beeninformed of their intentions, are, I believe, writing to you on thesubject. So keen is their regret that they intend respectfully to waitupon you on Tuesday morning by deputation, and ask if you cannot waiveyour difficulties in deference to their enthusiasm, and allow them toproceed with your election. 

Their suffrage may, I think, be regarded as one sign of how thethoughtful youth of Scotland estimate the work you have done in theworld of letters. 

And permit me to say that while these Rectorial elections in the otherUniversities have frequently turned on local questions, or been inspiredby political partisanship, St. Andrews has honourably sought to choosemen distinguished for literary eminence, and to make the Rectorship atribute at once of intellectual and moral esteem. 

May I add that when the 'perfervidum ingenium' of our northern racetakes the form not of youthful hero-worship, but of loyal admiration andrespectful homage, it is a very genuine affair. In the present instanceI may say it is no mere outburst of young undisciplined enthusiasm, butan honest expression of intellectual and moral indebtedness, the genuineand distinct tribute of many minds that have been touched to some higherissues by what you have taught them. They do not presume to speak ofyour place in English literature. They merely tell you by this profferedhonour (the highest in their power to bestow), how they have felt yourinfluence over them. 

My own obligations to you, and to the author of Aurora Leigh, are such, that of them 'silence is golden'. Yours ever gratefully. William Knight. 

Mr. Browning was deeply touched and gratified by these professions ofesteem. He persisted nevertheless in his refusal. The Glasgow nominationhad also been declined by him. 

On August 17, 1877, he wrote to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald from La Saisiaz:

'How lovely is this place in its solitude and seclusion, with its treesand shrubs and flowers, and above all its live mountain stream whichsupplies three fountains, and two delightful baths, a marvel of delicatedelight framed in with trees--I bathe there twice a day--and then whatwonderful views from the chalet on every side! Geneva lying underus, with the lake and the whole plain bounded by the Jura and our ownSaleve, which latter seems rather close behind our house, and yet takesa hard hour and a half to ascend--all this you can imagine since youknow the environs of the town; the peace and quiet move me the most--AndI fancy I shall drowse out the two months or more, doing no more ofserious work than reading--and that is virtuous renunciation of theglorious view to my right here--as I sit aerially like Euripides, andsee the clouds come and go and the view change in correspondence withthem. It will help me to get rid of the pain which attaches itself tothe recollections of Lucerne and Berne "in the old days when the Greekssuffered so much, " as Homer says. But a very real and sharp pain touchedme here when I heard of the death of poor Virginia March whom I knewparticularly, and parted with hardly a fortnight ago, leaving heraffectionate and happy as ever. The tones of her voice as on onememorable occasion she ejaculated repeatedly 'Good friend!' are freshstill. Poor Virginia! . . . '

Mr. Browning was more than quiescent during this stay in the Savoyardmountains. He was unusually depressed, and unusually disposed to regardthe absence from home as a banishment; and he tried subsequently toaccount for this condition by the shadow which coming trouble sometimescasts before it. It was more probably due to the want of the sea airwhich he had enjoyed for so many years, and to that special oppressiveheat of the Swiss valleys which ascends with them to almost theirhighest level. When he said that the Saleve seemed close behind thehouse, he was saying in other words that the sun beat back from, and theair was intercepted by it. We see, nevertheless, in his descriptionof the surrounding scenery, a promise of the contemplative delight innatural beauty to be henceforth so conspicuous in his experience, andwhich seemed a new feature in it. He had hitherto approached everyliving thing with curious and sympathetic observation--this hardlyrequires saying of one who had animals for his first and always familiarfriends. Flowers also attracted him by their perfume. But what he lovedin nature was essentially its prefiguring of human existence, orits echo of it; and it never appeared, in either his works or hisconversation, that he was much impressed by its inanimate forms--by eventhose larger phenomena of mountain and cloud-land on which the latterdwells. Such beauty as most appealed to him he had left behind withthe joys and sorrows of his Italian life, and it had almost inevitablypassed out of his consideration. During years of his residence in Londonhe never thought of the country as a source of pleasurable emotions, other than those contingent on renewed health; and the places to whichhe resorted had often not much beyond their health-giving qualities torecommend them; his appetite for the beautiful had probably dwindled forlack of food. But when a friend once said to him: 'You have not a greatlove for nature, have you?' he had replied: 'Yes, I have, but I lovemen and women better;' and the admission, which conveyed more than itliterally expressed, would have been true I believe at any, up to thepresent, period of his history. Even now he did not cease to love menand women best; but he found increasing enjoyment in the beauties ofnature, above all as they opened upon him on the southern slopes of theAlps; and the delight of the aesthetic sense merged gradually in thesatisfied craving for pure air and brilliant sunshine which marked hisfinal struggle for physical life. A ring of enthusiasm comes into hisletters from the mountains, and deepens as the years advance; doubtlessenhanced by the great--perhaps too great--exhilaration which the Alpineatmosphere produced, but also in large measure independent of it. Eachnew place into which the summer carries him he declares more beautifulthan the last. It possibly was so. 

A touch of autumnal freshness had barely crept into the atmosphere ofthe Saleve, when a moral thunderbolt fell on the little group of personsdomiciled at its base: Miss Egerton-Smith died, in what had seemedfor her unusually good health, in the act of preparing for a mountainexcursion with her friends--the words still almost on her lips inwhich she had given some directions for their comfort. Mr. Browning'simpressionable nervous system was for a moment paralyzed by the shock. It revived in all the emotional and intellectual impulses which gavebirth to 'La Saisiaz'. 

This poem contains, besides its personal reference and association, elements of distinctive biographical interest. It is the author'sfirst--as also last--attempt to reconstruct his hope of immortality bya rational process based entirely on the fundamental facts of his ownknowledge and consciousness--God and the human soul; and while the veryassumption of these facts, as basis for reasoning, places him at issuewith scientific thought, there is in his way of handling them a tributeto the scientific spirit, perhaps foreshadowed in the beautiful epilogueto 'Dramatis Personae', but of which there is no trace in his earlierreligious works. It is conclusive both in form and matter as to hisheterodox attitude towards Christianity. He was no less, in his way, aChristian when he wrote 'La Saisiaz' than when he published 'A Deathin the Desert' and 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; or at any periodsubsequent to that in which he accepted without questioning what he hadlearned at his mother's knee. He has repeatedly written or declared inthe words of Charles Lamb:* 'If Christ entered the room I should fallon my knees;' and again, in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander ofmen, and _he_ was no man. ' He has even added: 'If he had been, he wouldhave been an impostor. ' But the arguments, in great part negative, setforth in 'La Saisiaz' for the immortality of the soul, leave no placefor the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on thesubject. Christ remained for Mr. Browning a mystery and a message ofDivine Love, but no messenger of Divine intention towards mankind. 

 * These words have more significance when taken with their context. 'If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that Person [meaning Christ] was to come into the room, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment. '

The dialogue between Fancy and Reason is not only an admission ofuncertainty as to the future of the Soul: it is a plea for it; and assuch it gathers up into its few words of direct statement, threads ofreasoning which have been traceable throughout Mr. Browning's work. Inthis plea for uncertainty lies also a full and frank acknowledgment ofthe value of the earthly life; and as interpreted by his general views, that value asserts itself, not only in the means of probation whichlife affords, but in its existing conditions of happiness. No one, hedeclares, possessing the certainty of a future state would patiently andfully live out the present; and since the future can be only the ripenedfruit of the present, its promise would be neutralized, as well asactual experience dwarfed, by a definite revelation. Nor, conversely, need the want of a certified future depress the present spiritual andmoral life. It is in the nature of the Soul that it would suffer fromthe promise. The existence of God is a justification for hope. Andsince the certainty would be injurious to the Soul, hence destructiveto itself, the doubt--in other words, the hope--becomes a sufficientapproach to, a working substitute for it. It is pathetic to see howin spite of the convictions thus rooted in Mr. Browning's mind, theexpressed craving for more knowledge, for more light, will now and thenescape him. 

Even orthodox Christianity gives no assurance of reunion to those whomdeath has separated. It is obvious that Mr. Browning's poetic creedcould hold no conviction regarding it. He hoped for such reunion inproportion as he wished. There must have been moments in his life whenthe wish in its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. 'Prospice' appearsto prove this. But the wide range of imagination, no less than the lackof knowledge, forbade in him any forecast of the possibilities of thelife to come. He believed that if granted, it would be an advance on thepresent--an accession of knowledge if not an increase of happiness. Hewas satisfied that whatever it gave, and whatever it withheld, it wouldbe good. In his normal condition this sufficed to him. 

'La Saisiaz' appeared in the early summer of 1878, and with it 'TheTwo Poets of Croisic', which had been written immediately after it. Thevarious incidents of this poem are strictly historical; they lead theway to a characteristic utterance of Mr. Browning's philosophy of lifeto which I shall recur later. 

In 1872 Mr. Browning had published a first series of selections from hisworks; it was to be followed by a second in 1880. In a preface to theearlier volume, he indicates the plan which he has followed in thechoice and arrangement of poems; and some such intention runs alsothrough the second; since he declined a suggestion made to him for theintroduction or placing of a special poem, on the ground of its notconforming to the end he had in view. It is difficult, in the one caseas in the other, to reconstruct the imagined personality to which hispreface refers; and his words on the later occasion pointed rather tothat idea of a chord of feeling which is raised by the correspondence ofthe first and last poems of the respective groups. But either clue maybe followed with interest. 

Chapter 18

1878-1884

He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--Venice--FavouriteAlpine Retreats--Mrs. Arthur Bronson--Life in Venice--A Tragedy atSaint-Pierre--Mr. Cholmondeley--Mr. Browning's PatrioticFeeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow--'DramaticIdyls'--'Jocoseria'--'Ferishtah's Fancies'. 

The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. Browning's habits and experience. It impelled him finally to break withthe associations of the last seventeen autumns, which he rememberedmore in their tedious or painful circumstances than in the unexcitingpleasure and renewed physical health which he had derived from them. Hewas weary of the ever-recurring effort to uproot himself from his homelife, only to become stationary in some more or less uninterestingnorthern spot. The always latent desire for Italy sprang up in him, and with it the often present thought and wish to give his sister theopportunity of seeing it. 

Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them bothtoo well; but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, though asusual reluctantly, and not till the last moment, that they should movesouthwards in the August of 1878. Their route lay over the Spluegen; andhaving heard of a comfortable hotel near the summit of the Pass, theyagreed to remain there till the heat had sufficiently abated to allowof the descent into Lombardy. The advantages of this first arrangementexceeded their expectations. It gave them solitude without the senseof loneliness. A little stream of travellers passed constantly over themountain, and they could shake hands with acquaintances at night, andknow them gone in the morning. They dined at the table d'hote, but tookall other meals alone, and slept in a detached wing or 'dependance'of the hotel. Their daily walks sometimes carried them down to the ViaMala; often to the top of the ascent, where they could rest, lookingdown into Italy; and would even be prolonged over a period of fivehours and an extent of seventeen miles. Now, as always, the mountain airstimulated Mr. Browning's physical energy; and on this occasion it alsoespecially quickened his imaginative powers. He was preparing the firstseries of 'Dramatic Idylls'; and several of these, including 'IvanIvanovitch', were produced with such rapidity that Miss Browning refusedto countenance a prolonged stay on the mountain, unless he worked at amore reasonable rate. 

They did not linger on their way to Asolo and Venice, except for anight's rest on the Lake of Como and two days at Verona. In theirsuccessive journeys through Northern Italy they visited by degrees allits notable cities, and it would be easy to recall, in order and detail, most of these yearly expeditions. But the account of them would chieflyresolve itself into a list of names and dates; for Mr. Browning hadseldom a new impression to receive, even from localities which he hadnot seen before. I know that he and his sister were deeply struck bythe deserted grandeurs of Ravenna; and that it stirred in both of thema memorable sensation to wander as they did for a whole day through thepinewoods consecrated by Dante. I am nevertheless not sure that whenthey performed the repeated round of picture-galleries and palaces, theywere not sometimes simply paying their debt to opportunity, and as muchfor each other's sake as for their own. Where all was Italy, therewas little to gain or lose in one memorial of greatness, one objectof beauty, visited or left unseen. But in Asolo, even in Venice, Mr. Browning was seeking something more: the remembrance of his own actualand poetic youth. How far he found it in the former place we may inferfrom a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald. 

Sept. 28, 1878. 

And from 'Asolo', at last, dear friend! So can dreams come _false_. --S. , who has been writing at the opposite side of the table, has told youabout our journey and adventures, such as they were: but she cannottell you the feelings with which I revisit this--to me--memorable placeafter above forty years' absence, --such things have begun and ended withme in the interval! It was _too_ strange when we reached the ruined toweron the hill-top yesterday, and I said 'Let me try if the echo stillexists which I discovered here, ' (you can produce it from only _one_particular spot on a remainder of brickwork--) and thereupon it answeredme plainly as ever, after all the silence: for some children from theadjoining 'podere', happening to be outside, heard my voice and itsresult--and began trying to perform the feat--calling 'Yes, yes'--all invain: so, perhaps, the mighty secret will die with me! We shall probablystay here a day or two longer, --the air is so pure, the country soattractive: but we must go soon to Venice, stay our allotted time there, and then go homeward: you will of course address letters to Venice, notthis place: it is a pleasure I promise myself that, on arriving I shallcertainly hear you speak in a letter which I count upon finding. 

The old inn here, to which I would fain have betaken myself, isgone--levelled to the ground: I remember it was much damaged by a recentearthquake, and the cracks and chasms may have threatened a downfall. This Stella d'Oro is, however, much such an unperverted 'locanda' as itspredecessor--primitive indeed are the arrangements and unsophisticatethe ways: but there is cleanliness, abundance of goodwill, and the sweetItalian smile at every mistake: we get on excellently. To be sure neverwas such a perfect fellow-traveller, for my purposes, as S. , so thatI have no subject of concern--if things suit me they suit her--andvice-versa. I daresay she will have told you how we trudged together, this morning to Possagno--through a lovely country: how we saw all thewonders--and a wonder of detestability is the paint-performance of thegreat man!--and how, on our return, we found the little town enjoyinghigh market day, and its privilege of roaring and screaming over abargain. It confuses me altogether, --but at Venice I may write morecomfortably. You will till then, Dear Friend, remember me ever as yoursaffectionately, Robert Browning. 

If the tone of this does not express disappointment, it has none of therapture which his last visit was to inspire. The charm which forty yearsof remembrance had cast around the little city on the hill was dispelledfor, at all events, the time being. The hot weather and dust-coveredlandscape, with the more than primitive accommodation of which he spokein a letter to another friend, may have contributed something to thisresult. 

At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects. A London acquaintance, who passed them on their way to Italy, hadrecommended a cool and quiet hotel there, the Albergo dell' Universo. The house, Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, was situated on the shady side ofthe Grand Canal, just below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge. Theopen stretches of the Giudecca lay not far behind; and a scrap of gardenand a clean and open little street made pleasant the approach from backand side. It accommodated few persons in proportion to its size, andfewer still took up their abode there; for it was managed by a lady ofgood birth and fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been; andher husband, a retired Austrian officer, and two grown-up daughtersdid not lighten her task. Every year the fortunes sank lower; the upperstorey of the house was already falling into decay, and the fine oldfurniture passing into the brokers' or private buyers' hands. It still, however, afforded sufficiently comfortable, and, by reason of its verydrawbacks, desirable quarters to Mr. Browning. It perhaps turned thescale in favour of his return to Venice; for the lady whose hospitalityhe was to enjoy there was as yet unknown to him; and nothing would haveinduced him to enter, with his eyes open, one of the English-hauntedhotels, in which acquaintance, old and new, would daily greet him in thepublic rooms or jostle him in the corridors. 

He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight; theirprogramme did not this year include a longer stay; but it gave them timeto decide that no place could better suit them for an autumn holidaythan Venice, or better lend itself to a preparatory sojourn among theAlps; and the plan of their next, and, though they did not know it, manya following summer, was thus sketched out before the homeward journeyhad begun. 

Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even while resting from it; ifindeed he did rest entirely on this occasion. He consulted a Russianlady whom he met at the hotel, on the names he was introducing in'Ivan Ivanovitch'. It would be interesting to know what suggestions orcorrections she made, and how far they adapted themselves to the rhythmalready established, or compelled changes in it; but the one alternativewould as little have troubled him as the other. Mrs. Browning told Mr. Prinsep that her husband could never alter the wording of a poem withoutrewriting it, indeed, practically converting it into another; though hemore than once tried to do so at her instigation. But to the end of hislife he could at any moment recast a line or passage for the sake ofgreater correctness, and leave all that was essential in it untouched. 

Seven times more in the eleven years which remained to him, Mr. Browningspent the autumn in Venice. Once also, in 1882, he had proceeded towardsit as far as Verona, when the floods which marked the autumn of thatyear arrested his farther course. Each time he had halted first in somemore or less elevated spot, generally suggested by his French friend, Monsieur Dourlans, himself an inveterate wanderer, whose inclinationsalso tempted him off the beaten track. The places he most enjoyed wereSaint-Pierre la Chartreuse, and Gressoney Saint-Jean, where he stayedrespectively in 1881 and 1882, 1883 and 1885. Both of these had thedrawbacks, and what might easily have been the dangers, of remotenessfrom the civilized world. But this weighed with him so little, that heremained there in each case till the weather had broken, though therewas no sheltered conveyance in which he and his sister could traveldown; and on the later occasions at least, circumstances might easilyhave combined to prevent their departure for an indefinite time. Hebecame, indeed, so attached to Gressoney, with its beautiful outlookupon Monte Rosa, that nothing I believe would have hindered hisreturning, or at least contemplating a return to it, but the greatfatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain, by a path whichmade walking, wherever possible, the easier course. They did walk _down_it in the early October of 1885, and completed the hard seven hours'trudge to San Martino d'Aosta, without an atom of refreshment or aminute's rest. 

One of the great attractions of Saint-Pierre was the vicinity of theGrande Chartreuse, to which Mr. Browning made frequent expeditions, staying there through the night in order to hear the midnight mass. MissBrowning also once attempted the visit, but was not allowed to enter themonastery. She slept in the adjoining convent. 

The brother and sister were again at the Universo in 1879, 1880, and1881; but the crash was rapidly approaching, and soon afterwards itcame. The old Palazzo passed into other hands, and after a short periodof private ownership was consigned to the purposes of an Art Gallery. 

In 1880, however, they had been introduced by Mrs. Story to an Americanresident, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, and entered into most friendlyrelations with her; and when, after a year's interval, they were againcontemplating an autumn in Venice, she placed at their disposal a suiteof rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, which formed a supplementto her own house--making the offer with a kindly urgency which forbadeall thought of declining it. They inhabited these for a second time in1885, keeping house for themselves in the simple but comfortable foreignmanner they both so well enjoyed, only dining and spending the eveningwith their friend. But when, in 1888, they were going, as they thought, to repeat the arrangement, they found, to their surprise, a littleapartment prepared for them under Mrs. Bronson's own roof. This actof hospitality involved a special kindness on her part, of which Mr. Browning only became aware at the close of a prolonged stay; and a senseof increased gratitude added itself to the affectionate regard withwhich his hostess had already inspired both his sister and him. Sofar as he is concerned, the fact need only be indicated. It is fullyexpressed in the preface to 'Asolando'. 

During the first and fresher period of Mr. Browning's visits to Venice, he found a passing attraction in its society. It held an historicalelement which harmonized well with the decayed magnificence of the city, its old-world repose, and the comparatively simple modes of intercoursestill prevailing there. Mrs. Bronson's 'salon' was hospitably openwhenever her health allowed; but her natural refinement, and theconservatism which so strongly marks the higher class of Americans, preserved it from the heterogeneous character which Anglo-foreignsociability so often assumes. Very interesting, even important nameslent their prestige to her circle; and those of Don Carlos and hisfamily, of Prince and Princess Iturbide, of Prince and PrincessMetternich, and of Princess Montenegro, were on the list of her'habitues', and, in the case of the royal Spaniards, of her friends. Itneed hardly be said that the great English poet, with his fast spreadingreputation and his infinite social charm, was kindly welcomed and warmlyappreciated amongst them. 

English and American acquaintances also congregated in Venice, or passedthrough it from London, Florence, and Rome. Those resident in Italycould make their visits coincide with those of Mr. Browning and hissister, or undertake the journey for the sake of seeing them; while theoutward conditions of life were such as to render friendly intercoursemore satisfactory, and common social civilities less irksome than theycould be at home. Mr. Browning was, however, already too advanced inyears, too familiar with everything which the world can give, to be longaffected by the novelty of these experiences. It was inevitable thatthe need of rest, though often for the moment forgotten, should assertitself more and more. He gradually declined on the society of a smallnumber of resident or semi-resident friends; and, due exception beingmade for the hospitalities of his temporary home, became indebted to thekindness of Sir Henry and Lady Layard, of Mr. And Mrs. Curtis of PalazzoBarbaro, and of Mr. And Mrs. Frederic Eden, for most of the socialpleasure and comfort of his later residences in Venice. 

Part of a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald gives an insight into the characterof his life there: all the stronger that it was written under atemporary depression which it partly serves to explain. 

Albergo dell' Universo, Venezia, Italia: Sept. 24, '81. 

'Dear Friend, --On arriving here I found your letter to my greatsatisfaction--and yesterday brought the 'Saturday Review'--for which, many thanks. 

'We left our strange but lovely place on the 18th, reaching Chambery atevening, --stayed the next day there, --walking, among other diversionsto "Les Charmettes", the famous abode of Rousseau--kept much as when heleft it: I visited it with my wife perhaps twenty-five years ago, andplayed so much of "Rousseau's Dream" as could be effected on his antiqueharpsichord: this time I attempted the same feat, but only two notes orthereabouts out of the octave would answer the touch. Next morning weproceeded to Turin, and on Wednesday got here, in the middle of thelast night of the Congress Carnival--rowing up the Canal to our Albergothrough a dazzling blaze of lights and throng of boats, --there being, ifwe are told truly, 50, 000 strangers in the city. Rooms had beensecured for us, however: and the festivities are at an end, to my greatjoy, --for Venice is resuming its old quiet aspect--the only one I valueat all. Our American friends wanted to take us in their gondola to seethe principal illuminations _after_ the "Serenade", which was notover before midnight--but I was contented with _that_--being tired andindisposed for talking, and, having seen and heard quite enough fromour own balcony, went to bed: S. Having betaken her to her own room longbefore. 

'Next day we took stock of our acquaintances, --found that the Storys, on whom we had counted for company, were at Vallombrosa, though thetwo sons have a studio here--other friends are in sufficient numberhowever--and last evening we began our visits by a very classicalone--to the Countess Mocenigo, in her palace which Byron occupied: sheis a charming widow since two years, --young, pretty and of the prettiestmanners: she showed us all the rooms Byron had lived in, --and I wrotemy name in her album _on_ the desk himself wrote the last canto of 'Ch. Harold' and 'Beppo' upon. There was a small party: we were takenand introduced by the Layards who are kind as ever, and I met oldfriends--Lord Aberdare, Charles Bowen, and others. While I write comesa deliciously fresh 'bouquet' from Mrs. Bronson, an American lady, --inshort we shall find a week or two amusing enough; though--where are thepinewoods, mountains and torrents, and wonderful air? Venice is undera cloud, --dull and threatening, --though we were apprehensive of heat, arriving, as we did, ten days earlier than last year. . . . '

The evening's programme was occasionally varied by a visit to one ofthe theatres. The plays given were chiefly in the Venetian dialect, andneeded previous study for their enjoyment; but Mr. Browning assisted atone musical performance which strongly appealed to his historical andartistic sensibilities: that of the 'Barbiere' of Paisiello in theRossini theatre and in the presence of Wagner, which took place in theautumn of 1880. 

Although the manner of his sojourn in the Italian city placed all theresources of resident life at his command, Mr. Browning never abjuredthe active habits of the English traveller. He daily walked with hissister, as he did in the mountains, for walking's sake, as well as forthe delight of what his expeditions showed him; and the facilities whichthey supplied for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mindone of the great merits of his autumn residences in Italy. He exploredVenice in all directions, and learned to know its many points of beautyand interest, as those cannot who believe it is only to be seen froma gondola; and when he had visited its every corner, he fell back ona favourite stroll along the Riva to the public garden and back again;never failing to leave the house at about the same hour of the day. Later still, when a friend's gondola was always at hand, and air andsunshine were the one thing needful, he would be carried to the Lido, and take a long stretch on its farther shore. 

The letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, from which I have already quoted, concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place atSaint-Pierre just before his departure, and in which Mr. Browning'sintuitions had played a striking part. 

'And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence?Our journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of the one muleof the village being requisitioned by the 'Juge d'Instruction' fromGrenoble, come to enquire into a murder committed two days before. My sister and I used once a day to walk for a couple of hours up amountain-road of the most lovely description, and stop at thesummit whence we looked down upon the minute hamlet of St. -Pierred'Entremont, --even more secluded than our own: then we got back to ourown aforesaid. And in this Paradisial place, they found, yesterday week, a murdered man--frightfully mutilated--who had been caught apparently inthe act of stealing potatoes in a field: such a crime had never occurredin the memory of the oldest of our folk. Who was the murderer is themystery--whether the field's owner--in his irritation at discoveringthe robber, --or one of a band of similar 'charbonniers' (for theysuppose the man to be a Piedmontese of that occupation) remains tobe proved: they began by imprisoning the owner, who denies his guiltenergetically. Now the odd thing is, that, either the day of, or afterthe murder, --as I and S. Were looking at the utter solitude, I had thefancy "What should I do if I suddenly came upon a dead body in thisfield? Go and proclaim it--and subject myself to all the vexationsinflicted by the French way of procedure (which begins by assumingthat you may be the criminal)--or neglect an obvious duty, and returnsilently. " I, of course, saw that the former was the only proper course, whatever the annoyance involved. And, all the while, there was justabout to be the very same incident for the trouble of somebody. '

Here the account breaks off; but writing again from the same place, August 16, 1882, he takes up the suspended narrative with this question:

'Did I tell you of what happened to me on the last day of my stay herelast year?' And after repeating the main facts continues as follows:

'This morning, in the course of my walk, I entered into conversationwith two persons of whom I made enquiry myself. They said the accusedman, a simple person, had been locked up in a high chamber, --protestinghis innocence strongly, --and troubled in his mind by the affairaltogether and the turn it was taking, had profited by the gendarme'snegligence, and thrown himself out of the window--and so died, continuing to the last to protest as before. My presentiment of whatsuch a person might have to undergo was justified you see--thoughI should not in any case have taken _that_ way of getting out of thedifficulty. The man added, "it was not he who committed the murder, butthe companions of the man, an Italian charcoal-burner, who owed him agrudge, killed him, and dragged him to the field--filling his sack withpotatoes as if stolen, to give a likelihood that the field's owner hadcaught him stealing and killed him, --so M. Perrier the greffier toldme. " Enough of this grim story. 

. . . . . 

'My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found: "Vouzsavez la croix au sommet de la colline? A cette distance de cela!" Thatis precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me. '

A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3 clearly refers tosome comment of Mrs. Fitz-Gerald's on the peculiar nature of thispresentiment:

'No--I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thingthat was really about to take place. By a law of the association ofideas--_contraries_ come into the mind as often as _similarities_--and thepeace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jarwith them. I have often thought of the trouble that might have befallenme if poor Miss Smith's death had happened the night before, when wewere on the mountain alone together--or next morning when we were on theproposed excursion--only _then_ we should have had companions. '

The letter then passes to other subjects. 

'This is the fifth magnificent day--like magnificence, unfit for turningto much account--for we cannot walk till sunset. I had two hours' walk, or nearly, before breakfast, however: It is the loveliest country I everhad experience of, and we shall prolong our stay perhaps--apart fromthe concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be gladto apprehend no long journey--besides the annoyance of having to passFlorence and Rome unvisited, for S. 's sake, I mean: even Naples wouldhave been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability. 

'Your "Academy" came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electriceel, as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about theArchbishop who has always been strangely kind to me. '

He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month ofOctober with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the partyassembled there was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley'sguests, a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent ofa dangerous mountain without a guide, and who lost her life in theexperiment. 

A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show thateven in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning's patriotism did not go tosleep. There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendshipdid not; but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that theyshould be largely absorbed by politics, though he followed the course ofhis country's history as a necessary part of his own life. It neededa crisis like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irishstruggle, to arouse him to a full emotional participation in currentevents. How deeply he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen. 

'If the George Smiths are still with you, give them my love, and tellthem we shall expect to see them at Venice, --which was not so likelyto be the case when we were bound for Ischia. As for Lady Wolseley--onedares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now; but my own pulsesbeat pretty strongly when I open the day's newspaper--which, by some newarrangement, reaches us, oftener than not, on the day after publication. Where is your Bertie? I had an impassioned letter, a fortnight ago, from a nephew of mine, who is in the second division [battalion?] ofthe Black Watch; he was ordered to Edinburgh, and the regiment notdispatched, after all, --it having just returned from India; the poorfellow wrote in his despair "to know if I could do anything!" He may bewanted yet: though nothing seems wanted in Egypt, so capital appears tobe the management. '

In 1879 Mr. Browning published the first series of his 'Dramatic Idyls';and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration throughthe public mind. In 'La Saisiaz' and the accompanying poems he hadaccomplished what was virtually a life's work. For he was approachingthe appointed limit of man's existence; and the poetic, which had beennourished in him by the natural life--which had once outstripped itsdevelopments, but on the whole remained subject to them--had therefore, also, passed through the successive phases of individual growth. He hadbeen inspired as dramatic poet by the one avowed conviction that littleelse is worth study but the history of a soul; and outward act orcircumstance had only entered into his creations as condition orincident of the given psychological state. His dramatic imaginationhad first, however unconsciously, sought its materials in himself; thengradually been projected into the world of men and women, which hiswidening knowledge laid open to him; it is scarcely necessary to saythat its power was only fully revealed when it left the remote regionsof poetical and metaphysical self-consciousness, to invoke the not lessmysterious and far more searching utterance of the general human heart. It was a matter of course that in this expression of his dramaticgenius, the intellectual and emotional should exhibit the varyingrelations which are developed by the natural life: that feeling shouldbegin by doing the work of thought, as in 'Saul', and thought end bydoing the work of feeling, as in 'Fifine at the Fair'; and that the twoshould alternate or combine in proportioned intensity in such works ofan intermediate period as 'Cleon', 'A Death in the Desert', the 'Epistleof Karshish', and 'James Lee's Wife'; the sophistical ingenuities of'Bishop Blougram', and 'Sludge'; and the sad, appealing tenderness of'Andrea del Sarto' and 'The Worst of It'. 

It was also almost inevitable that so vigorous a genius should sometimesfalsify calculations based on the normal life. The long-continuedforce and freshness of Mr. Browning's general faculties was in itselfa protest against them. We saw without surprise that during the decadewhich produced 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau', 'Fifine at the Fair', and'Red Cotton Nightcap Country', he could give us 'The Inn Album', withits expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, rarely equalled, in the whole range of his work: or those two unique creations of airyfancy and passionate symbolic romance, 'Saint Martin's Summer', and'Numpholeptos'. It was no ground for astonishment that the creativepower in him should even ignore the usual period of decline, and defy, so far as is humanly possible, its natural laws of modification. But inthe 'Dramatic Idyls' he did more than proceed with unflagging powers ona long-trodden, distinctive course; he took a new departure. 

Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined andworked out his new group of poems; he presented it in a no lesssubtle and complex form. But he gave it the added force of picturesquerealization; and this by means of incidents both powerful in themselves, and especially suited for its development. It was only in proportion tothis higher suggestiveness that a startling situation ever seemed tohim fit subject for poetry. Where its interest and excitement exhaustedthemselves in the external facts, it became, he thought, the propertyof the chronicler, but supplied no material for the poet; and he oftendeclined matter which had been offered him for dramatic treatmentbecause it belonged to the more sensational category. 

It is part of the vital quality of the 'Dramatic Idyls' that, in them, the act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other. We see the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimlystriving to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this thatthe psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such atleast is the case in 'Martin Relph', and the idealized Russian legend, 'Ivan Ivanovitch'. The grotesque tragedy of 'Ned Bratts' has also itsmarked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broaderkind. 

The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of'Idyls', 1880, and 'Jocoseria', 1883. In 'Ferishtah's Fancies', 1884, Mr. Browning returned to his original manner, though carrying into itsomething of the renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change. The lyrics which alternate with its parables include some of the mosttender, most impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems. 

The moral and religious opinions conveyed in this later volume may beaccepted without reserve as Mr. Browning's own, if we subtract from themthe exaggerations of the figurative and dramatic form. It is indeedeasy to recognize in them the under currents of his whole real andimaginative life. They have also on one or two points an intrinsic valuewhich will justify a later allusion. 

Chapter 19

1881-1887

The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey--His Attitudetowards the Society; Letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. CeliaThaxter--Letter to Miss Hickey; 'Strafford'--Shakspere and WordsworthSocieties--Letters to Professor Knight--Appreciation in Italy;Professor Nencioni--The Goldoni Sonnet--Mr. Barrett Browning;Palazzo Manzoni--Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow--Mrs. BloomfieldMoore--Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin--Loss of oldFriends--Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy--'Parleyings withcertain People of Importance in their Day'. 

This Indian summer of Mr. Browning's genius coincided with the highestmanifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, anyliving writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Societybearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. The idea arosealmost simultaneously in the mind of Dr. , then Mr. Furnivall, and ofMiss E. H. Hickey. One day, in the July of 1881, as they were on theirway to Warwick Crescent to pay an appointed visit there, Miss Hickeystrongly expressed her opinion of the power and breadth of Mr. Browning's work; and concluded by saying that much as she lovedShakespeare, she found in certain aspects of Browning what evenShakespeare could not give her. Mr. Furnivall replied to this by askingwhat she would say to helping him to found a Browning Society; and itthen appeared that Miss Hickey had recently written to him a letter, suggesting that he should found one; but that it had miscarried, or, asshe was disposed to think, not been posted. Being thus, at all events, agreed as to the fitness of the undertaking, they immediately spoke ofit to Mr. Browning, who at first treated the project as a joke; but didnot oppose it when once he understood it to be serious. His only provisowas that he should remain neutral in respect to its fulfilment. Herefused even to give Mr. Furnivall the name or address of any friends, whose interest in himself or his work might render their co-operationprobable. 

This passive assent sufficed. A printed prospectus was now issued. Abouttwo hundred members were soon secured. A committee was elected, of whichMr. J. T. Nettleship, already well known as a Browning student, wasone of the most conspicuous members; and by the end of October a smallSociety had come into existence, which held its inaugural meeting inthe Botanic Theatre of University College. Mr. Furnivall, its principalfounder, and responsible organizer, was Chairman of the Committee, andMiss E. H. Hickey, the co-founder, was Honorary Secretary. When, two orthree years afterwards, illness compelled her to resign this position, it was assumed by Mr. J. Dykes Campbell. 

Although nothing could be more unpretending than the action of thisBrowning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it didnot begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formationof a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established aprecedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of hiswork, or, as some one termed it, for making a man a classic during hislifetime. But this fact was not yet generally known; and meanwhile acurious contradiction developed itself in the public mind. The outerworld of Mr. Browning's acquaintance continued to condemn the too greathonour which was being done to him; from those of the inner circle heconstantly received condolences on being made the subject of proceedingswhich, according to them, he must somehow regard as an offence. 

This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. Atthe beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions of theSociety. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings as to itsfuture. He could not be sure that its action would always be judicious, still less that it would be always successful. He was prepared for itsbeing laughed at, and for himself being included in the laughter. He consented to its establishment for what seemed to him the oneunanswerable reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, no justcause for forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn betweenthe kind of publicity which every writer seeks, which, for good orevil, he had already obtained, and that which the Browning Society wasconferring on him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed, and discussed 'viva voce' and in print. That these proceedings wouldnow take place in other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, throughother organs than newspapers or magazines, by other and larger groupsof persons than those usually gathered round a dinner-or a tea-table, involved no real change in the situation. In any case, he had madehimself public property; and those who thus organized their study of himwere exercising an individual right. If his own rights had been assailedhe would have guarded them also; but the circumstances of the caseprecluded such a contingency. And he had his reward. How he felt towardsthe Society at the close of its first session is better indicated in thefollowing letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald than in the note to Mr. Yates whichMr. Sharp has published, and which was written with more reserve and, Ibelieve, at a rather earlier date. Even the shade of condescension whichlingers about his words will have been effaced by subsequent experience;and many letters written to Dr. Furnivall must, since then, haveattested his grateful and affectionate appreciation of kindness intendedand service done to him. 

. . . They always treat me gently in 'Punch'--why don't you do thesame by the Browning Society? I see you emphasize Miss Hickey'sacknowledgement of defects in time and want of rehearsal: but I lookfor no great perfection in a number of kindly disposed strangers tome personally, who try to interest people in my poems by singing andreading them. They give their time for nothing, offer their littleentertainment for nothing, and certainly get next to nothing in the wayof thanks--unless from myself who feel grateful to the faces I shallnever see, the voices I shall never hear. The kindest notices I havehad, or at all events those that have given me most pleasure, have beeneduced by this Society--A. Sidgwick's paper, that of Professor Corson, Miss Lewis' article in this month's 'Macmillan'--and I feel grateful forit all, for my part, --and none the less for a little amusement at thewonder of some of my friends that I do not jump up and denounce thepractices which must annoy me so much. Oh! my 'gentle Shakespeare', howwell you felt and said--'never anything can be amiss when simpleness andduty tender it. ' So, dear Lady, here is my duty and simplicity tenderingitself to you, with all affection besides, and I being ever yours, R. Browning. 

That general disposition of the London world which left the ranks of thelittle Society to be three-fourths recruited among persons, many livingat a distance, whom the poet did not know, became also in its waya satisfaction. It was with him a matter of course, though never ofindifference, that his closer friends of both sexes were among itsmembers; it was one of real gratification that they included fromthe beginning such men as Dean Boyle of Salisbury, the Rev. LlewellynDavies, George Meredith, and James Cotter Morison--that they enjoyed thesympathy and co-operation of such a one as Archdeacon Farrar. But he hadan ingenuous pride in reading the large remainder of the Society's listsof names, and pointing out the fact that there was not one among themwhich he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, 'All these peoplecare for me as a poet. No social interest, no personal prepossession, has attracted them to my work. ' And when the unknown name was not onlyappended to a list; when it formed the signature of a paper--excellentor indifferent as might be--but in either case bearing witness toa careful and unobtrusive study of his poems, by so much was thegratification increased. He seldom weighed the intrinsic merit of suchproductions; he did not read them critically. No man was ever moreadverse to the seeming ungraciousness of analyzing the quality of agift. In real life indeed this power of gratitude sometimes defeated itsown end, by neutralizing his insight into the motive or effort involvedin different acts of kindness, and placing them all successively on thesame plane. 

In the present case, however, an ungraduated acceptance of the labourbestowed on him was part of the neutral attitude which it was hisconstant endeavour to maintain. He always refrained from noticing anyerroneous statement concerning himself or his works which might appearin the Papers of the Society: since, as he alleged, if he once began tocorrect, he would appear to endorse whatever he left uncorrected, andthus make himself responsible, not only for any interpretation thatmight be placed on his poems, but, what was far more serious, forevery eulogium that was bestowed upon them. He could not stand aloof asentirely as he or even his friends desired, since it was usual with somemembers of the Society to seek from him elucidations of obscure passageswhich, without these, it was declared, would be a stumbling-block tofuture readers. But he disliked being even to this extent drawn intoits operation; and his help was, I believe, less and less frequentlyinvoked. Nothing could be more false than the rumour which once arosethat he superintended those performances of his plays which took placeunder the direction of the Society. Once only, and by the urgent desireof some of the actors, did he witness a last rehearsal of one of them. 

It was also a matter of course that men and women brought together bya pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning's work should often ignore itsauthorized explanations, and should read and discuss it in the light ofpersonal impressions more congenial to their own mind; and the variousand circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem did notserve to render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry liesso largely in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions ofit have their positive value and also their relative truth; and theintellectual friction which was thus created, not only in the parentsociety, but in its offshoots in England and America, was not theirleast important result. 

These Societies conferred, it need hardly be said, no less real benefitson the public at large. They extended the sale of Mr. Browning's works, and with it their distinct influence for intellectual and moral good. They not only created in many minds an interest in these works, butaroused the interest where it was latent, and gave it expression whereit had hitherto found no voice. One fault, alone, could be chargedagainst them; and this lay partly in the nature of all friendlyconcerted action: they stirred a spirit of enthusiasm in which itwas not easy, under conditions equally genuine, to distinguish theindividual element from that which was due to contagion; while thepresence among us of the still living poet often infused into thatenthusiasm a vaguely emotional element, which otherwise detracted fromits intellectual worth. But in so far as this was a drawback to theintended action of the Societies, it was one only in the most negativesense; nor can we doubt, that, to a certain extent, Mr. Browning's bestinfluence was promoted by it. The hysterical sensibilities which, forsome years past, he had unconsciously but not unfrequently aroused inthe minds of women, and even of men, were a morbid development of thatinfluence, which its open and systematic extension tended rather todiminish than to increase. 

It is also a matter of history that Robert Browning had many deep andconstant admirers in England, and still more in America, * long beforethis organized interest had developed itself. Letters received fromoften remote parts of the United States had been for many years a detailof his daily experience; and even when they consisted of the request foran autograph, an application to print selections from his works, or amere expression of schoolboy pertness or schoolgirl sentimentality, theybore witness to his wide reputation in that country, and the high esteemin which he was held there. ** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter ofBoston had long, I believe, been conspicuous in the higher ranks of hisdisciples, though they first occur in his correspondence at aboutthis date. I trust I may take for granted Mrs. Thaxter's permission topublish a letter from her. 

 * The cheapening of his works in America, induced by the absence of international copyright, accounts of course in some degree for their wider diffusion, and hence earlier appreciation there. 

 ** One of the most curious proofs of this was the Californian Railway time-table edition of his poems. 

Newtonville, Massachusetts: March 14, 1880. 

My dear Mr. Browning:

Your note reached me this morning, but it belonged to my husband, for itwas he who wrote to you; so I gave it to him, glad to put into his handsso precious a piece of manuscript, for he has for you and all your workan enthusiastic appreciation such as is seldom found on this planet: itis not possible that the admiration of one mortal for another can exceedhis feeling for you. You might have written for him, I've a friend over the sea, . . . . 

 It all grew out of the books I write, &c. 

You should see his fine wrath and scorn for the idiocy that doesn't atonce comprehend you!

He knows every word you have ever written; long ago 'Sordello' wasan open book to him from title-page to closing line, and _all_ you haveprinted since has been as eagerly and studiously devoured. He reads youaloud (and his reading is a fine art) to crowds of astonished people, he swears by you, he thinks no one save Shakspere has a right to bementioned in the same century with you. You are the great enthusiasm ofhis life. 

Pardon me, you are smiling, I dare say. You hear any amount of suchthings, doubtless. But a genuine living appreciation is always worthhaving in this old world, it is like a strong fresh breeze from off thebrine, that puts a sense of life and power into a man. You cannot be theworse for it. Yours very sincerely, Celia Thaxter. 

When Mr. Thaxter died, in February 1885, his son wrote to Mr. Browningto beg of him a few lines to be inscribed on his father's tombstone. Thelittle poem by which the request was answered has not yet, I believe, been published. 

'Written to be inscribed on the gravestone of Levi Thaxter. '

Thou, whom these eyes saw never, --say friends true Who say my soul, helped onward by my song, Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too?I gave but of the little that I knew: How were the gift requited, whilealong Life's path I pace, could'st thou make weakness strong, Help mewith knowledge--for Life's old, Death's new! R. B. April 19, '85. 

A publication which connected itself with the labours of the Society, without being directly inspired by it, was the annotated 'Strafford'prepared by Miss Hickey for the use of students. It may be agreeable tothose who use the little work to know the estimate in which Mr. Browningheld it. He wrote as follows:

19, Warwick Crescent, W. : February 15, 1884. 

Dear Miss Hickey, --I have returned the Proofs by post, --nothing can bebetter than your notes--and with a real wish to be of use, I readthem carefully that I might detect never so tiny a fault, --but I foundnone--unless (to show you how minutely I searched, ) it should be onethat by 'thriving in your contempt, ' I meant simply 'while you despisethem, and for all that, they thrive and are powerful to do you harm. 'The idiom you prefer--quite an authorized one--comes to much the samething after all. 

You must know how much I grieve at your illness--temporary as I willtrust it to be--I feel all your goodness to me--or whatever in my booksmay be taken for me--well, I wish you knew how thoroughly I feel it--andhow truly I am and shall ever be Yours affectionately, Robert Browning. 

From the time of the foundation of the New Shakspere Society, Mr. Browning was its president. In 1880 he became a member of the WordsworthSociety. Two interesting letters to Professor Knight, dated respectively1880 and 1887, connect themselves with the working of the latter; and, in spite of their distance in time, may therefore be given together. The poem which formed the subject of the first was 'The Daisy';* theselection referred to in the second was that made in 1888 by ProfessorKnight for the Wordsworth Society, with the co-operation of Mr. Browningand other eminent literary men. 

 * That beginning 'In youth from rock to rock, I went. '

19, Warwick Crescent, W. : July 9, '80. 

My dear Sir, --You pay me a compliment in caring for my opinion--but, such as it is, a very decided one it must be. On every account, yourmethod of giving the original text, and subjoining in a note thevariations, each with its proper date, is incontestably preferableto any other. It would be so, if the variations were evenimprovements--there would be pleasure as well as profit in seeing whatwas good grow visibly better. But--to confine ourselves to the single'proof' you have sent me--in every case the change is sadly for theworse: I am quite troubled by such spoilings of passage after passageas I should have chuckled at had I chanced upon them in some copypencil-marked with corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed, they arenearly as wretched as the touchings-up of the 'Siege of Corinth' by thelatter. If ever diabolic agency was caught at tricks with 'apostolic'achievement (see page 9)--and 'apostolic', with no 'profanity' at all, Iesteem these poems to be--surely you may bid it 'aroint' 'about and allabout' these desecrated stanzas--each of which, however, thanks to yourpiety, we may hail, I trust, with a hearty

 Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain Nor be less dear to future men Than in old time!

Believe me, my dear Sir, Yours very sincerely, Robert Browning. 

19, Warwick Crescent, W. : March 23, '87. 

Dear Professor Knight, --I have seemed to neglect your commissionshamefully enough: but I confess to a sort of repugnance to classifyingthe poems as even good and less good: because in my heart I fear Ishould do it almost chronologically--so immeasureably superior seem tome the 'first sprightly runnings'. Your selection would appear to beexcellent; and the partial admittance of the later work prevents onefrom observing the too definitely distinguishing black line betweensupremely good and--well, what is fairly tolerable--from Wordsworth, always understand! I have marked a few of the early poems, not includedin your list--I could do no other when my conscience tells me that Inever can be tired of loving them: while, with the best will in theworld, I could never do more than try hard to like them. *

 * By 'them' Mr. Browning clearly means the later poems, and probably has omitted a few words which would have shown this. 

You see, I go wholly upon my individual likings and distastes: thatother considerations should have their weight with other people isnatural and inevitable. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. 

Many thanks for the volume just received--that with the correspondence. I hope that you restore the swan simile so ruthlessly cut away from'Dion'. 

In 1884 he was again invited, and again declined, to stand for theLord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews. In the same year hereceived the LL. D. Degree of the University of Edinburgh; and in thefollowing was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies ofthat city. * During the few days spent there on the occasion of hisinvestiture, he was the guest of Professor Masson, whose solicitouskindness to him is still warmly remembered in the family. 

 * This Association was instituted in 1833, and is a union of literary and debating societies. It is at present composed of five: the Dialectic, Scots Law, Diagnostic, Philosophical, and Philomathic. 

The interest in Mr. Browning as a poet is beginning to spread inGermany. There is room for wonder that it should not have done sobefore, though the affinities of his genius are rather with the olderthan with the more modern German mind. It is much more remarkable that, many years ago, his work had already a sympathetic exponent in Italy. Signor Nencioni, Professor of Literature in Florence, had made hisacquaintance at Siena, and was possibly first attracted to him throughhis wife, although I never heard that it was so. He was soon, however, fascinated by Mr. Browning's poetry, and made it an object of seriousstudy; he largely quoted from, and wrote on it, in the Roman paper'Fanfulla della Domenica', in 1881 and 1882; and published last winterwhat is, I am told, an excellent article on the same subject, in the'Nuova Antologia'. Two years ago he travelled from Rome to Venice(accompanied by Signor Placci), for the purpose of seeing him. He isfond of reciting passages from the works, and has even made attempts attranslation: though he understands them too well not to pronounce them, what they are for every Latin language, untranslatable. 

In 1883 Mr. Browning added another link to the 'golden' chain of versewhich united England and Italy. A statue of Goldoni was about to beerected in Venice. The ceremonies of the occasion were to include theappearance of a volume--or album--of appropriate poems; and CavaliereMolmenti, its intending editor, a leading member of the 'ErectionCommittee', begged Mr. Browning to contribute to it. It was also desiredthat he should be present at the unveiling. * He was unable to grantthis request, but consented to write a poem. This sonnet to Goldoni alsodeserves to be more widely known, both for itself and for the manner ofits production. Mr. Browning had forgotten, or not understood, howsoon the promise concerning it must be fulfilled, and it was actuallyscribbled off while a messenger, sent by Signor Molmenti, waited for it. 

 * It was, I think, during this visit to Venice that he assisted at a no less interesting ceremony: the unveiling of a commemorative tablet to Baldassaro Galuppi, in his native island of Burano. 

Goldoni, --good, gay, sunniest of souls, --Glassing half Venice in thatverse of thine, --What though it just reflect the shade and shine Ofcommon life, nor render, as it rolls Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient forthy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited tothat opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. Therethrong the people: how they come and go Lisp the soft language, flauntthe bright garb, --see, --On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge!Dear king of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so, Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!

Venice, Nov. 27, 1883. 

A complete bibliography would take account of three other sonnets, 'The Founder of the Feast', 1884, 'The Names', 1884, and 'Why I am aLiberal', 1886, to which I shall have occasion to refer; but wedecline insensibly from these on to the less important or morefugitive productions which such lists also include, and on which it isunnecessary or undesirable that any stress should be laid. 

In 1885 he was joined in Venice by his son. It was 'Penini's' firstreturn to the country of his birth, his first experience of the citywhich he had only visited in his nurse's arms; and his delight in it wasso great that the plan shaped itself in his father's mind of buying ahouse there, which should serve as 'pied-a-terre' for the family, butmore especially as a home for him. Neither the health nor the energiesof the younger Mr. Browning had ever withstood the influence of theLondon climate; a foreign element was undoubtedly present in hisotherwise thoroughly English constitution. Everything now pointed to hissettling in Italy, and pursuing his artist life there, only interruptingit by occasional visits to London and Paris. His father entered intonegotiations for the Palazzo Manzoni, next door to the former Hotel del'Univers; and the purchase was completed, so far as he was concerned, before he returned to England. The fact is related, and his own positiontowards it described in a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow, written fromVenice. 

Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, S. Moise: Nov. 15, '85. 

My two dear friends will have supposed, with plenty of reason, that Inever got the kind letter some weeks ago. When it came, I was in themiddle of an affair, conducted by letters of quite another kind, withpeople abroad: and as I fancied that every next day might bring menews very interesting to me and likely to be worth telling to the dearfriends, I waited and waited--and only two days since did the mattercome to a satisfactory conclusion--so, as the Irish song has it, 'Openyour eyes and die with surprise' when I inform you that I have purchasedthe Manzoni Palace here, on the Canal Grande, of its owner, MarcheseMontecucculi, an Austrian and an absentee--hence the delay ofcommunication. I did this purely for Pen--who became at once simplyinfatuated with the city which won my whole heart long before he wasborn or thought of. I secure him a perfect domicile, every facility forhis painting and sculpture, and a property fairly worth, even here andnow, double what I gave for it--such is the virtue in these parts ofready money! I myself shall stick to London--which has been so eminentlygood and gracious to me--so long as God permits; only, when theinevitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body--(I shall notbelieve in his reaching my soul and proper self)--there will be acapital retreat provided: and meantime I shall be able to 'take mineease in mine own inn' whenever so minded. There, my dear friends! Itrust now to be able to leave very shortly; the main business cannot beformally concluded before two months at least--through the absence ofthe Marchese, --who left at once to return to his duties as commanderof an Austrian ship; but the necessary engagement to sell and buy at aspecified price is made in due legal form, and the papers will be sentto me in London for signature. I hope to get away the week after next atlatest, --spite of the weather in England which to-day's letters reportas 'atrocious', --and ours, though variable, is in the main verytolerable and sometimes perfect; for all that, I yearn to be at home inpoor Warwick Crescent, which must do its best to make me forget my newabode. I forget you don't know Venice. Well then, the Palazzo Manzoniis situate on the Grand Canal, and is described by Ruskin, --to giveno other authority, --as 'a perfect and very rich example of ByzantineRenaissance: its warm yellow marbles are magnificent. ' And again--'anexquisite example (of Byzantine Renaissance) as applied to domesticarchitecture. ' So testify the 'Stones of Venice'. But we will talk aboutthe place, over a photograph, when I am happy enough to be with youagain. 

Of Venetian gossip there is next to none. We had an admirable VenetianCompany, --using the dialect, --at the Goldoni Theatre. The actingof Zago, in his various parts, and Zenon-Palladini, in her especialcharacter of a Venetian piece of volubility and impulsiveness in theshape of a servant, were admirable indeed. The manager, Gallina, is aplaywright of much reputation, and gave us some dozen of his own pieces, mostly good and clever. S. Is very well, --much improved in health: wewalk sufficiently in this city where walking is accounted impossible bythose who never attempt it. Have I tired your good temper? No! you everwished me well, and I love you both with my whole heart. S. 's love goeswith mine--who am ever yours Robert Browning. 

He never, however, owned the Manzoni Palace. The Austrian gentlemen*whose property it was, put forward, at the last moment, unexpected andto his mind unreasonable claims; and he was preparing to contestthe position, when a timely warning induced him to withdraw from italtogether. The warning proceeded from his son, who had remained on thespot, and was now informed on competent authority that the foundationsof the house were insecure. 

 * Two or three brothers. 

In the early summer of 1884, and again in 1886, Miss Browning had aserious illness; and though she recovered, in each case completely, andin the first rapidly, it was considered desirable that she should nottravel so far as usual from home. She and her brother therefore acceptedfor the August and September of 1884 the urgent invitation of anAmerican friend, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, to stay with her at a villawhich she rented for some seasons at St. Moritz. Mr. Browning wasdelighted with the Engadine, where the circumstances of his abode, and the thoughtful kindness of his hostess, allowed him to enjoy thebenefits of comparative civilization together with almost perfectrepose. The weather that year was brilliant until the end of September, if not beyond it; and his letters tell the old pleasant story of longdaily walks and a general sense of invigoration. One of these, written to Mr. And Mrs. Skirrow, also contains some pungent remarks oncontemporary events, with an affectionate allusion to one of the chiefactors in them. 

'Anyhow, I have the sincerest hope that Wolseley may get done assoon, and kill as few people, as possible, --keeping himself safe andsound--brave dear fellow--for the benefit of us all. '

He also speaks with great sympathy of the death of Mr. Charles Sartoris, which had just taken place at St. -Moritz. 

In 1886, Miss Browning was not allowed to leave England; and she andMr. Browning established themselves for the autumn at the Hand Hotel atLlangollen, where their old friends, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, wouldbe within easy reach. Mr. Browning missed the exhilarating effects ofthe Alpine air; but he enjoyed the peaceful beauty of the Welsh valley, and the quiet and comfort of the old-fashioned English inn. A new sourceof interest also presented itself to him in some aspects of the lifeof the English country gentleman. He was struck by the improvementseffected by its actual owner* on a neighbouring estate, and by theprovisions contained in them for the comfort of both the men and theanimals under his care; and he afterwards made, in reference to them, what was for a professing Liberal, a very striking remark: 'Talk ofabolishing that class of men! They are the salt of the earth!' EverySunday afternoon he and his sister drank tea--weather permitting--onthe lawn with their friends at Brintysilio; and he alludes gracefullyto these meetings in a letter written in the early summer of 1888, whenLady Martin had urged him to return to Wales. 

 * I believe a Captain Best. 

The poet left another and more pathetic remembrance of himself in theneighbourhood of Llangollen: his weekly presence at the afternoon Sundayservice in the parish church of Llantysilio. Churchgoing was, as I havesaid, no part of his regular life. It was no part of his life in London. But I do not think he ever failed in it at the Universities or in thecountry. The assembling for prayer meant for him something deeper inboth the religious and the human sense, where ancient learning and pietybreathed through the consecrated edifice, or where only the figurative'two or three' were 'gathered together' within it. A memorial tablet nowmarks the spot at which on this occasion the sweet grave face and thevenerable head were so often seen. It has been placed by the directionof Lady Martin on the adjoining wall. 

It was in the September of this year that Mr. Browning heard of thedeath of M. Joseph Milsand. This name represented for him one of the fewclose friendships which were to remain until the end, unclouded infact and in remembrance; and although some weight may be given to thosecircumstances of their lives which precluded all possibility of frictionand risk of disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, and Mr. Browning's unfailing powers of appreciation would, in all possiblecases, have maintained the bond intact. The event was at the lastsudden, but happily not quite unexpected. 

Many other friends had passed by this time out of the poet's life--thoseof a younger, as well as his own and an older generation. Miss Haworthdied in 1883. Charles Dickens, with whom he had remained on the mostcordial terms, had walked between him and his son at Thackeray'sfuneral, to receive from him, only seven years later, the same piousoffice. Lady Augusta Stanley, the daughter of his old friend, LadyElgin, was dead, and her husband, the Dean of Westminster. So also were'Barry Cornwall' and John Forster, Alfred Domett, and Thomas Carlyle, Mr. Cholmondeley and Lord Houghton; others still, both men and women, whose love for him might entitle them to a place in his Biography, butwhom I could at most only mention by name. 

For none of these can his feeling have been more constant or moredisinterested than that which bound him to Carlyle. He visited himat Chelsea in the last weary days of his long life, as often as theirdistance from each other and his own engagements allowed. Even the man'sposthumous self-disclosures scarcely availed to destroy the affectionatereverence which he had always felt for him. He never ceased to defendhim against the charge of unkindness to his wife, or to believe that inthe matter of their domestic unhappiness she was the more responsibleof the two. * Yet Carlyle had never rendered him that service, easy as itappears, which one man of letters most justly values from another:that of proclaiming the admiration which he privately expresses for hisworks. The fact was incomprehensible to Mr. Browning--it was so foreignto his own nature; and he commented on it with a touch, though merely atouch, of bitterness, when repeating to a friend some almost extravaganteulogium which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. 'Ifonly, ' he said, 'those words had been ever repeated in public, what goodthey might have done me!'

 * He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I believe little liking was lost between them. He told a comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire. He took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing it. 

In the spring of 1886, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent tothe Royal Academy, rendered vacant by the death of Lord Houghton. He hadlong been on very friendly terms with the leading Academicians, and aconstant guest at the Banquet; and his fitness for the office admittedof no doubt. But his nomination by the President, and the manner inwhich it was ratified by the Council and general body, gave him sincerepleasure. 

Early in 1887, the 'Parleyings' appeared. Their author is still the sameRobert Browning, though here and there visibly touched by the handof time. Passages of sweet or majestic music, or of exquisite fancy, alternate with its long stretches of argumentative thought; and thelight of imagination still plays, however fitfully, over statementsof opinion to which constant repetition has given a suggestion ofcommonplace. But the revision of the work caused him unusual trouble. The subjects he had chosen strained his powers of exposition; and Ithink he often tried to remedy by mere verbal correction, what was adefect in the logical arrangement of his ideas. They would slide intoeach other where a visible dividing line was required. The last stage ofhis life was now at hand; and the vivid return of fancy to hisboyhood's literary loves was in pathetic, perhaps not quite accidental, coincidence with the fact. It will be well to pause at this beginningof his decline, and recall so far as possible the image of the man wholived, and worked, and loved, and was loved among us, during that briefold age, and the lengthened period of level strength which had precededit. The record already given of his life and work supplies the outlineof the picture; but a few more personal details are required for itscompletion. 

Chapter 20

Constancy to Habit--Optimism--Belief in Providence--PoliticalOpinions--His Friendships--Reverence for Genius--Attitude towardshis Public--Attitude towards his Work--Habits of Work--HisReading--Conversational Powers--Impulsiveness and Reserve--NervousPeculiarities--His Benevolence--His Attitude towards Women. 

When Mr. Browning wrote to Miss Haworth, in the July of 1861, he hadsaid: 'I shall still grow, I hope; but my root is taken, and remains. 'He was then alluding to a special offshoot of feeling and association, on the permanence of which it is not now necessary to dwell; but itis certain that he continued growing up to a late age, and that thedevelopment was only limited by those general roots, those fixedconditions of his being, which had predetermined its form. Thisprogressive intellectual vitality is amply represented in his works; italso reveals itself in his letters in so far as I have been allowed topublish them. I only refer to it to give emphasis to a contrasted orcorresponding characteristic: his aversion to every thought of change. Ihave spoken of his constancy to all degrees of friendship and love. Whathe loved once he loved always, from the dearest man or woman to whom hisallegiance had been given, to the humblest piece of furniture which hadserved him. It was equally true that what he had done once he was wont, for that very reason, to continue doing. The devotion to habits offeeling extended to habits of life; and although the lower constancygenerally served the purposes of the higher, it also sometimes clashedwith them. It conspired with his ready kindness of heart to make himsubject to circumstances which at first appealed to him through thatkindness, but lay really beyond its scope. This statement, it is true, can only fully apply to the latter part of his life. His powers ofreaction must originally have been stronger, as well as freer from theparalysis of conflicting motive and interest. The marked shrinking fromeffort in any untried direction, which was often another name for hisstability, could scarcely have coexisted with the fresher and morecurious interest in men and things; we know indeed from recorded factsthat it was a feeling of later growth; and it visibly increased with theperiodical nervous exhaustion of his advancing years. I am convinced, nevertheless, that, when the restiveness of boyhood had passed away, Mr. Browning's strength was always more passive than active; that hehabitually made the best of external conditions rather than tried tochange them. He was a 'fighter' only by the brain. And on this point, though on this only, his work is misleading. 

The acquiescent tendency arose in some degree from two equally prominentcharacteristics of Mr. Browning's nature: his optimism, and his beliefin direct Providence; and these again represented a condition ofmind which was in certain respects a quality, but must in others berecognized as a defect. It disposed him too much to make a virtue ofhappiness. It tended also to the ignoring or denying of many incidentalpossibilities, and many standing problems of human suffering. The firstpart of this assertion is illustrated by 'The Two Poets of Croisic', in which Mr. Browning declares that, other conditions being equal, the greater poet will have been he who led the happier life, who mostcompletely--and we must take this in the human as well as religioussense--triumphed over suffering. The second has its proof in thecontempt for poetic melancholy which flashes from the supposed utteranceof Shakespeare in 'At the Mermaid'; its negative justification in thewhole range of his work. 

Such facts may be hard to reconcile with others already known of Mr. Browning's nature, or already stated concerning it; but it is in thedepths of that nature that the solution of this, as of more than oneother anomaly, must be sought. It is true that remembered pain dweltlonger with him than remembered pleasure. It is true that the last greatsorrow of his life was long felt and cherished by him as a religion, andthat it entered as such into the courage with which he first confrontedit. It is no less true that he directly and increasingly cultivatedhappiness; and that because of certain sufferings which had beenconnected with them, he would often have refused to live his happiestdays again. 

It seems still harder to associate defective human sympathy with hiskind heart and large dramatic imagination, though that very imaginationwas an important factor in the case. It forbade the collective andmathematical estimate of human suffering, which is so much in favourwith modern philanthropy, and so untrue a measure for the individuallife; and he indirectly condemns it in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' in theparable of 'Bean Stripes'. But his dominant individuality also barredthe recognition of any judgment or impression, any thought or feeling, which did not justify itself from his own point of view. The barrierwould melt under the influence of a sympathetic mood, as it wouldstiffen in the atmosphere of disagreement. It would yield, as did in hiscase so many other things, to continued indirect pressure, whether fromhis love of justice, the strength of his attachments, or his powerof imaginative absorption. But he was bound by the conditions of anessentially creative nature. The subjectiveness, if I may for once usethat hackneyed word, had passed out of his work only to root itself morestrongly in his life. He was self-centred, as the creative nature mustinevitably be. He appeared, for this reason, more widely sympathetic inhis works than in his life, though even in the former certain grounds ofvicarious feeling remained untouched. The sympathy there displayed wascreative and obeyed its own law. That which was demanded from him byreality was responsive, and implied submission to the law of otherminds. 

Such intellectual egotism is unconnected with moral selfishness, thoughit often unconsciously does its work. Were it otherwise, I should havepassed over in silence this aspect, comprehensive though it is, of Mr. Browning's character. He was capable of the largest self-sacrifice andof the smallest self-denial; and would exercise either whenever loveor duty clearly pointed the way. He would, he believed, cheerfully havedone so at the command, however arbitrary, of a Higher Power; he oftenspoke of the absence of such injunction, whether to endurance or action, as the great theoretical difficulty of life for those who, like himself, rejected or questioned the dogmatic teachings of Christianity. Thisdoes not mean that he ignored the traditional moralities which have solargely taken their place. They coincided in great measure with his owninstincts; and few occasions could have arisen in which they would notbe to him a sufficient guide. I may add, though this is a digression, that he never admitted the right of genius to defy them; when such aright had once been claimed for it in his presence, he rejoinedquickly, 'That is an error! _noblesse oblige_. ' But he had difficulty inacknowledging any abstract law which did not derive from a Higher Power;and this fact may have been at once cause and consequence of the specialconditions of his own mind. All human or conventional obligation appealsfinally to the individual judgment; and in his case this could easily beobscured by the always militant imagination, in regard to any subjectin which his feelings were even indirectly concerned. No one sawmore justly than he, when the object of vision was general or remote. Whatever entered his personal atmosphere encountered a refracting mediumin which objects were decomposed, and a succession of details, each heldas it were close to the eye, blocked out the larger view. 

We have seen, on the other hand, that he accepted imperfect knowledge aspart of the discipline of experience. It detracted in no sense from hisconviction of direct relations with the Creator. This was indeed thecentral fact of his theology, as the absolute individual existence hadbeen the central fact of his metaphysics; and when he described thefatal leap in 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' as a frantic appeal to theHigher Powers for the 'sign' which the man's religion did not afford, and his nature could not supply, a special dramatic sympathy was atwork within him. The third part of the epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae'represented his own creed; though this was often accentuated in thesense of a more personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery, than the poem conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjectiveidealist philosopher were curiously blended in his composition. 

The transition seems violent from this old-world religion to any systemof politics applicable to the present day. They were, nevertheless, closely allied in Mr. Browning's mind. His politics were, so far as theywent, the practical aspect of his religion. Their cardinal doctrine wasthe liberty of individual growth; removal of every barrier of prejudiceor convention by which it might still be checked. He had been a Radicalin youth, and probably in early manhood; he remained, in the truestsense of the word, a Liberal; and his position as such was defined inthe sonnet prefixed in 1886 to Mr. Andrew Reid's essay, 'Why I am aLiberal', and bearing the same name. Its profession of faith did not, however, necessarily bind him to any political party. It separated himfrom all the newest developments of so-called Liberalism. He respectedthe rights of property. He was a true patriot, hating to see his countryplunged into aggressive wars, but tenacious of her position among theempires of the world. He was also a passionate Unionist; although thequestion of our political relations with Ireland weighed less with him, as it has done with so many others, than those considerations of law andorder, of honesty and humanity, which have been trampled under foot inthe name of Home Rule. It grieved and surprised him to find himself onthis subject at issue with so many valued friends; and no pain of LostLeadership was ever more angry or more intense, than that which came tohim through the defection of a great statesman whom he had honoured andloved, from what he believed to be the right cause. 

The character of Mr. Browning's friendships reveals itself in greatmeasure in even a simple outline of his life. His first friends ofhis own sex were almost exclusively men of letters, by taste if not byprofession; the circumstances of his entrance into society made this amatter of course. In later years he associated on cordial terms withmen of very various interests and professions; and only writers ofconspicuous merit, whether in prose or poetry, attracted him as such. Nointercourse was more congenial to him than that of the higher class ofEnglish clergymen. He sympathized in their beliefs even when he did notshare them. Above all he loved their culture; and the love of culture ingeneral, of its old classic forms in particular, was as strong in him asif it had been formed by all the natural and conventional associationsof a university career. He had hearty friends and appreciators among thedignitaries of the Church--successive Archbishops and Bishops, Deansof Westminster and St. Paul's. They all knew the value of the greatfreelance who fought like the gods of old with the regular army. Noname, however, has been mentioned in the poet's family more frequentlyor with more affection than that of the Rev. J. D. W. Williams, Vicarof Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. The mutual acquaintance, which was madethrough Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, was prepared by Mr. Williams' great love for his poems, of which hetranslated many into Latin and Greek; but I am convinced that Mr. Browning's delight in his friend's classical attainments was quite asgreat as his gratification in the tribute he himself derived from them. 

His love of genius was a worship: and in this we must include his wholelife. Nor was it, as this feeling so often is, exclusively exercisedupon the past. I do not suppose his more eminent contemporaries everquite knew how generous his enthusiasm for them had been, how free fromany under-current of envy, or impulse to avoidable criticism. He couldnot endure even just censure of one whom he believed, or had believedto be great. I have seen him wince under it, though no third person waspresent, and heard him answer, 'Don't! don't!' as if physical pain werebeing inflicted on him. In the early days he would make his friend, M. De Monclar, draw for him from memory the likenesses of famous writerswhom he had known in Paris; the sketches thus made of George Sand andVictor Hugo are still in the poet's family. A still more strikingand very touching incident refers to one of the winters, probably thesecond, which he spent in Paris. He was one day walking with little Pen, when Beranger came in sight, and he bade the child 'run up to' or 'runpast that gentleman, and put his hand for a moment upon him. ' This wasa great man, he afterwards explained, and he wished his son to be ableby-and-by to say that if he had not known, he had at all events touchedhim. Scientific genius ranked with him only second to the poetical. 

Mr. Browning's delicate professional sympathies justified somesensitiveness on his own account; but he was, I am convinced, as freefrom this quality as a man with a poet-nature could possibly be. It mayseem hazardous to conjecture how serious criticism would have affectedhim. Few men so much 'reviewed' have experienced so little. He was byturns derided or ignored, enthusiastically praised, zealously analyzedand interpreted: but the independent judgment which could embrace atonce the quality of his mind and its defects, is almost absent--has beenso at all events during later years--from the volumes which have beenwritten about him. I am convinced, nevertheless, that he would haveaccepted serious, even adverse criticism, if it had borne the impress ofunbiassed thought and genuine sincerity. It could not be otherwise withone in whom the power of reverence was so strongly marked. 

He asked but one thing of his reviewers, as he asked but one thing ofhis larger public. The first demand is indicated in a letter to Mrs. Frank Hill, of January 31, 1884. 

Dear Mrs. Hill, --Could you befriend me? The 'Century' prints a littleinsignificance of mine--an impromptu sonnet--but prints it _correctly_. The 'Pall Mall' pleases to extract it--and produces what I enclose:one line left out, and a note of admiration (!) turned into an I, anda superfluous 'the' stuck in--all these blunders with the correctlyprinted text before it! So does the charge of unintelligibility attachitself to your poor friend--who can kick nobody. Robert Browning. 

The carelessness often shown in the most friendly quotation could hardlybe absent from that which was intended to support a hostile view; andthe only injustice of which he ever complained, was what he spoke ofas falsely condemning him out of his own mouth. He used to say: 'If acritic declares that any poem of mine is unintelligible, the readermay go to it and judge for himself; but, if it is made to appearunintelligible by a passage extracted from it and distorted bymisprints, I have no redress. ' He also failed to realize thoseconditions of thought, and still more of expression, which made himoften on first reading difficult to understand; and as the youngergeneration of his admirers often deny those difficulties where theyexist, as emphatically as their grandfathers proclaimed them where theydid not, public opinion gave him little help in the matter. 

The second (unspoken) request was in some sense an antithesis to thefirst. Mr. Browning desired to be read accurately but not literally. Hedeprecated the constant habit of reading him into his work; whether insearch of the personal meaning of a given passage or poem, or in thelight of a foregone conclusion as to what that meaning must be. Thelatter process was that generally preferred, because the individual mindnaturally seeks its own reflection in the poet's work, as it does in thefacts of nature. It was stimulated by the investigations of the BrowningSocieties, and by the partial familiarity with his actual life whichconstantly supplied tempting, if untrustworthy clues. It grew out of thestrong personal as well as literary interest which he inspired. But thetendency to listen in his work for a single recurrent note always struckhim as analogous to the inspection of a picture gallery with eyes blindto every colour but one; and the act of sympathy often involved in thismode of judgment was neutralized for him by the limitation of his geniuswhich it presupposed. His general objection to being identified withhis works is set forth in 'At the Mermaid', and other poems of the samevolume, in which it takes the form of a rather captious protest againstinferring from the poet any habit or quality of the man; and where also, under the impulse of the dramatic mood, he enforces the lesson by sayingmore than he can possibly mean. His readers might object that hishuman personality was so often plainly revealed in his poetic utterance(whether or not that of Shakespeare was), and so often also avowed byit, that the line which divided them became impossible to draw. But heagain would have rejoined that the Poet could never express himself withany large freedom, unless a fiction of impersonality were granted tohim. He might also have alleged, he often did allege, that in his casethe fiction would hold a great deal of truth; since, except inthe rarest cases, the very fact of poetic, above all of dramaticreproduction, detracts from the reality of the thought or feelingreproduced. It introduces the alloy of fancy without which the fixedoutlines of even living experience cannot be welded into poetic form. Heclaimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should allow for theaction in it of the constructive imagination, in the exercise of whichall deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, which showed itselfin seeking historical authority for every character or incident which heemployed by way of illustration, was especially irritating to him. 

I may (as indeed I must) concede this much, without impugning eitherthe pleasure or the gratitude with which he recognized the increasinginterest in his poems, and, if sometimes exhibited in a mistaken form, the growing appreciation of them. 

There was another and more striking peculiarity in Mr. Browning'sattitude towards his works: his constant conviction that the latest mustbe the best, because the outcome of the fullest mental experience, andof the longest practice in his art. He was keenly alive to the necessaryfailings of youthful literary production; he also practically denied toit that quality which so often places it at an advantage over that, notindeed of more mature manhood, but at all events of advancing age. Therewas much in his own experience to blind him to the natural effects oftime; it had been a prolonged triumph over them. But the delusion, in sofar as it was one, lay deeper than the testimony of such experience, andwould I think have survived it. It was the essence of his belief thatthe mind is superior to physical change; that it may be helped orhindered by its temporary alliance with the body, but will none the lessoutstrip it in their joint course; and as intellect was for him the lifeof poetry, so was the power of poetry independent of bodily progress andbodily decline. This conviction pervaded his life. He learned, thoughhappily very late, to feel age an impediment; he never accepted it as adisqualification. 

He finished his work very carefully. He had the better right toresent any garbling of it, that this habitually took place throughhis punctuation, which was always made with the fullest sense of itssignificance to any but the baldest style, and of its special importanceto his own. I have heard him say: 'People accuse me of not taking pains!I take nothing _but_ pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrastbetween the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse towhich the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labourwhich he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit must have grownupon him; it was natural that it should do so as thought gained theascendency over emotion in what he had to say. Mrs. Browning told Mr. Val Prinsep that her husband 'worked at a great rate;' and this factprobably connected itself with the difficulty he then found in alteringthe form or wording of any particular phrase; he wrote most frequentlyunder that lyrical inspiration in which the idea and the form are leastseparable from each other. We know, however, that in the later editionsof his old work he always corrected where he could; and if we noticethe changed lines in 'Paracelsus' or 'Sordello', as they appear in theedition of 1863, or the slighter alterations indicated for the lastreprint of his works, we are struck by the care evinced in them forgreater smoothness of expression, as well as for greater accuracy andforce. 

He produced less rapidly in later life, though he could throw offimpromptu verses, whether serious or comical, with the utmost ease. His work was then of a kind which required more deliberation; and otherclaims had multiplied upon his time and thoughts. He was glad to haveaccomplished twenty or thirty lines in a morning. After lunch-time, formany years, he avoided, when possible, even answering a note. But healways counted a day lost on which he had not written something; and inthose last years on which we have yet to enter, he complained bitterlyof the quantity of ephemeral correspondence which kept him back fromhis proper work. He once wrote, on the occasion of a short illness whichconfined him to the house, 'All my power of imagination seems gone. Imight as well be in bed!' He repeatedly determined to write a poem everyday, and once succeeded for a fortnight in doing so. He was then inParis, preparing 'Men and Women'. 'Childe Roland' and 'Women and Roses'were among those produced on this plan; the latter having been suggestedby some flowers sent to his wife. The lyrics in 'Ferishtah's Fancies'were written, I believe, on consecutive days; and the intention reneweditself with his last work, though it cannot have been maintained. 

He was not as great a reader in later as in earlier years; he hadneither time nor available strength to be so if he had wished; and heabsorbed almost unconsciously every item which added itself to thesum of general knowledge. Books had indeed served for him their mostimportant purpose when they had satisfied the first curiosities of hisgenius, and enabled it to establish its independence. His mind was madeup on the chief subjects of contemporary thought, and what was novel orcontroversial in its proceeding had no attraction for him. He would readanything, short of an English novel, to a friend whose eyes requiredthis assistance; but such pleasure as he derived from the act was moreoften sympathetic than spontaneous, even when he had not, as he oftenhad, selected for it a book which he already knew. In the course of hislast decade he devoted himself for a short time to the study of Spanishand Hebrew. The Spanish dramatists yielded him a fund of new enjoyment;and he delighted in his power of reading Hebrew in its most difficultprinted forms. He also tried, but with less result, to improve hisknowledge of German. His eyesight defied all obstacles of bad paper andancient type, and there was anxiety as well as pleasure to those abouthim in his unfailing confidence in its powers. He never wore spectacles, nor had the least consciousness of requiring them. He would read anold closely printed volume by the waning light of a winter afternoon, positively refusing to use a lamp. Indeed his preference of the faintestnatural light to the best that could be artificially produced wasperhaps the one suggestion of coming change. He used for all purposesa single eye; for the two did not combine in their action, the rightserving exclusively for near, the left for distant objects. This was whyin walking he often closed the right eye; while it was indispensableto his comfort in reading, not only that the light should come fromthe right side, but that the left should be shielded from any luminousobject, like the fire, which even at the distance of half the length ofa room would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near sight. 

His literary interest became increasingly centred on records of thelives of men and women; especially of such men and women as he hadknown; he was generally curious to see the newly published biographies, though often disappointed by them. He would also read, even for hisamusement, good works of French or Italian fiction. His allegiance toBalzac remained unshaken, though he was conscious of lengthiness when heread him aloud. This author's deep and hence often poetic realism was, I believe, bound up with his own earliest aspirations towards dramaticart. His manner of reading aloud a story which he already knew wasthe counterpart of his own method of construction. He would claim hislistener's attention for any apparently unimportant fact which had apart to play in it: he would say: 'Listen to this description: it willbe important. Observe this character: you will see a great deal more ofhim or her. ' We know that in his own work nothing was thrown away; nonote was struck which did not add its vibration to the general utteranceof the poem; and his habitual generosity towards a fellow-workerprompted him to seek and recognize the same quality, even in productionswhere it was less conspicuous than in his own. The patient reading whichhe required for himself was justified by that which he always demandedfor others; and he claimed it less in his own case for his possibleintricacies of thought or style, than for that compactness of livingstructure in which every detail or group of details was essential to thewhole, and in a certain sense contained it. He read few things with somuch pleasure as an occasional chapter in the Old Testament. 

Mr. Browning was a brilliant talker; he was admittedly more a talkerthan a conversationalist. But this quality had nothing in common withself-assertion or love of display. He had too much respect for theacquirements of other men to wish to impose silence on those whowere competent to speak; and he had great pleasure in listening to adiscussion on any subject in which he was interested, and on whichhe was not specially informed. He never willingly monopolized theconversation; but when called upon to take a prominent part in it, either with one person or with several, the flow of remembered knowledgeand revived mental experience, combined with the ingenuous eagerness tovindicate some point in dispute would often carry him away; while hishearers, nearly as often, allowed him to proceed from absence of anydesire to interrupt him. This great mental fertility had been preparedby the wide reading and thorough assimilation of his early days; and itwas only at a later, and in certain respects less vigorous period, thatits full bearing could be seen. His memory for passing occurrences, evensuch as had impressed him, became very weak; it was so before he hadgrown really old; and he would urge this fact in deprecation of any wantof kindness or sympathy, which a given act of forgetfulness might seemto involve. He had probably always, in matters touching his own life, the memory of feelings more than that of facts. I think this has beendescribed as a peculiarity of the poet-nature; and though this memoryis probably the more tenacious of the two, it is no safe guide to therecovery of facts, still less to that of their order and significance. Yet up to the last weeks, even the last conscious days of his life, his remembrance of historical incident, his aptness of literaryillustration, never failed him. His dinner-table anecdotes supplied, of course, no measure for this spontaneous reproductive power; yet someweight must be given to the number of years during which he couldabound in such stories, and attest their constant appropriateness by notrepeating them. 

This brilliant mental quality had its drawback, on which I have alreadytouched in a rather different connection: the obstacle which it createdto even serious and private conversation on any subject on which he wasnot neutral. Feeling, imagination, and the vividness of personal pointsof view, constantly thwarted the attempt at a dispassionate exchange ofideas. But the balance often righted itself when the excitement ofthe discussion was at an end; and it would even become apparent thatexpressions or arguments which he had passed over unheeded, or as itseemed unheard, had stored themselves in his mind and borne fruit there. 

I think it is Mr. Sharp who has remarked that Mr. Browning combinedimpulsiveness of manner with much real reserve. He was habituallyreticent where his deeper feelings were concerned; and the impulsivenessand the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and humantemperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the othertheir sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must havemodified each other. But the partial secretiveness had also occasionallyits conscious motives, some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and fromthis point of view it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the moreexpansive quality. He never, however, intentionally withheld from otherssuch things as it concerned them to know. His intellectual and religiousconvictions were open to all who seriously sought them; and if, evenon such points, he did not appear communicative, it was because he tookmore interest in any subject of conversation which did not directlycentre in himself. 

Setting aside the delicacies which tend to self-concealment, and forwhich he had been always more or less conspicuous; excepting also thepride which would co-operate with them, all his inclinations were inthe direction of truth; there was no quality which he so much lovedand admired. He thought aloud wherever he could trust himself to do so. Impulse predominated in all the active manifestations of his nature. Thefiery child and the impatient boy had left their traces in the man; andwith them the peculiar childlike quality which the man of genius neveroutgrows, and which, in its mingled waywardness and sweetness, waspresent in Robert Browning till almost his dying day. There was also arecurrent touch of hardness, distinct from the comparatively ungenialmood of his earlier years of widowhood; and this, like his reserve, seemed to conflict with his general character, but in reality harmonizedwith it. It meant, not that feeling was suspended in him, but that itwas compressed. It was his natural response to any opposition which hisreasonings could not shake nor his will overcome, and which, rightlyor not, conveyed to him the sense of being misunderstood. It reacted inpain for others, but it lay with an aching weight on his own heart, andwas thrown off in an upheaval of the pent-up kindliness and affection, the moment their true springs were touched. The hardening power in hiscomposition, though fugitive and comparatively seldom displayed, was infact proportioned to his tenderness; and no one who had not seen himin the revulsion from a hard mood, or the regret for it, knew what thattenderness could be. 

Underlying all the peculiarities of his nature, its strength and itsweakness, its exuberance and its reserves, was the nervous excitabilityof which I have spoken in an earlier chapter. I have heard him say:'I am nervous to such a degree that I might fancy I could not enter adrawing-room, if I did not know from long experience that I can do it. 'He did not desire to conceal this fact, nor need others conceal it forhim; since it was only calculated to disarm criticism and tostrengthen sympathy. The special vital power which he derived from thisorganization need not be reaffirmed. It carried also its inevitabledisablements. Its resources were not always under his own control; andhe frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which wouldseize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily socialroutine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in asympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided withthe exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeedhe had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease andgrace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probablyfar more from his innate human and social qualities than from even hisfamiliar intercourse with the world. But he could not extemporize aspeech. He could not on the spur of the moment string together themore or less set phrases which an after-dinner oration demands. All hisfriends knew this, and spared him the necessity of refusing. He hadonce a headache all day, because at a dinner, the night before, a falsereport had reached him that he was going to be asked to speak. Thisalone would have sufficed to prevent him from accepting any publicpost. He confesses the disability in a pretty note to Professor Knight, written in reference to a recent meeting of the Wordsworth Society. 

19, Warwick Crescent, W. : May 9, '84. 

My dear Professor Knight, --I seem ungracious and ungrateful, but amneither; though, now that your festival is over, I wish I could haveovercome my scruples and apprehensions. It is hard to say--when kindpeople press one to 'just speak for a minute'--that the business, so easy to almost anybody, is too bewildering for oneself. Ever trulyyours, Robert Browning. 

A Rectorial Address need probably not have been extemporized, but itwould also have been irksome to him to prepare. He was not accustomedto uttering himself in prose except within the limits, and underthe incitements, of private correspondence. The ceremonial publicityattaching to all official proceedings would also have inevitably been atrial to him. He did at one of the Wordsworth Society meetings speak asentence from the chair, in the absence of the appointed chairman, who had not yet arrived; and when he had received his degree from theUniversity of Edinburgh he was persuaded to say a few words to theassembled students, in which I believe he thanked them for their warmwelcome; but such exceptions only proved the rule. 

We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes flowedfrom him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, due toa nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; and that theeffusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike old friends and new, arose also from a momentary want of self-possession. We may admit thisthe more readily that in both cases it was allied to real kindnessof intention, above all in the latter, where the fear of seeming coldtowards even a friend's friend, strove increasingly with the defectivememory for names and faces which were not quite familiar to him. He wasalso profoundly averse to the idea of posing as a man of superiorgifts; having indeed, in regard to social intercourse, as little of thefastidiousness of genius as of its bohemianism. He, therefore, made ita rule, from the moment he took his place as a celebrity in the Londonworld, to exert himself for the amusement of his fellow-guests at adinner-table, whether their own mental resources were great or small;and this gave rise to a frequent effort at conversation, which converteditself into a habit, and ended by carrying him away. This at least washis own conviction in the matter. The loud voice, which so many personsmust have learned to think habitual with him, bore also traces of thishalf-unconscious nervous stimulation. * It was natural to him in angeror excitement, but did not express his gentler or more equable statesof feeling; and when he read to others on a subject which moved him, his utterance often subsided into a tremulous softness which left itscarcely audible. 

 * Miss Browning reminds me that loud speaking had become natural to him through the deafness of several of his intimate friends: Landor, Kirkup, Barry Cornwall, and previously his uncle Reuben, whose hearing had been impaired in early life by a blow from a cricket ball. This fact necessarily modifies my impression of the case, but does not quite destroy it. 

The mental conditions under which his powers of sympathy were exercisedimposed no limits on his spontaneous human kindness. This characteristicbenevolence, or power of love, is not fully represented in Mr. Browning's works; it is certainly not prominent in those of the laterperiod, during which it found the widest scope in his life; but he hasin some sense given its measure in what was intended as an illustrationof the opposite quality. He tells us, in 'Fifine at the Fair', thatwhile the best strength of women is to be found in their love, the bestproduct of a man is only yielded to hate. It is the 'indignant wine'which has been wrung from the grape plant by its external mutilation. Hecould depict it dramatically in more malignant forms of emotion; but hecould only think of it personally as the reaction of a nobler feelingwhich has been gratuitously outraged or repressed. 

He more directly, and still more truly, described himself when he saidat about the same time, 'I have never at any period of my life been deafto an appeal made to me in the name of love. ' He was referring to anexperience of many years before, in which he had even yielded his betterjudgment to such an appeal; and it was love in the larger sense forwhich the concession had been claimed. 

It was impossible that so genuine a poet, and so real a man, should beotherwise than sensitive to the varied forms of feminine attraction. Heavowedly preferred the society of women to that of men; they were, asI have already said, his habitual confidants, and, evidently, his mostfrequent correspondents; and though he could have dispensed with womanfriends as he dispensed with many other things--though he most often wonthem without knowing it--his frank interest in their sex, and the oftencaressing kindness of manner in which it was revealed, might justlybe interpreted by individual women into a conscious appeal to theirsympathy. It was therefore doubly remarkable that on the ground ofbenevolence, he scarcely discriminated between the claim on him of awoman, and that of a man; and his attitude towards women was in thisrespect so distinctive as to merit some words of notice. It was large, generous, and unconventional; but, for that very reason, it was not, in the received sense of the word, chivalrous. Chivalry proceeds onthe assumption that women not only cannot, but should not, take careof themselves in any active struggle with life; Mr. Browning had notheoretical objection to a woman's taking care of herself. He saw noreason why, if she was hit, she should not hit back again, or evenwhy, if she hit, she should not receive an answering blow. He respondedswiftly to every feminine appeal to his kindness or his protection, whether arising from physical weakness or any other obvious cause ofhelplessness or suffering; but the appeal in such cases lay first to hishumanity, and only in second order to his consideration of sex. He wouldhave had a man flogged who beat his wife; he would have had one floggedwho ill-used a child--or an animal: he was notedly opposed to anysweeping principle or practice of vivisection. But he never quiteunderstood that the strongest women are weak, or at all eventsvulnerable, in the very fact of their sex, through the minor traditionsand conventions with which society justly, indeed necessarily, surrounds them. Still less did he understand those real, if impalpable, differences between men and women which correspond to the differenceof position. He admitted the broad distinctions which have becomeproverbial, and are therefore only a rough measure of the truth. Hecould say on occasion: 'You ought to _be_ better; you are a woman; I oughtto _know_ better; I am a man. ' But he had had too large an experience ofhuman nature to attach permanent weight to such generalizations; andthey found certainly no expression in his works. Scarcely an instance ofa conventional, or so-called man's woman, occurs in their whole range. Excepting perhaps the speaker in 'A Woman's Last Word', 'Pompilia' and'Mildred' are the nearest approach to it; and in both of these wefind qualities of imagination or thought which place them outside theconventional type. He instinctively judged women, both morally andintellectually, by the same standards as men; and when confronted bysome divergence of thought or feeling, which meant, in the woman's case, neither quality nor defect in any strict sense of the word, but simplya nature trained to different points of view, an element of perplexityentered into his probable opposition. When the difference presenteditself in a neutral aspect, it affected him like the casualpeculiarities of a family or a group, or a casual disagreement betweenthings of the same kind. He would say to a woman friend: 'You women areso different from men!' in the tone in which he might have said, 'YouIrish, or you Scotch, are so different from Englishmen;' or again, 'Itis impossible for a man to judge how a woman would act in such or sucha case; you are so different;' the case being sometimes one in whichit would be inconceivable to a normal woman, and therefore to thegenerality of men, that she should act in any but one way. 

The vague sense of mystery with which the poet's mind usually investsa being of the opposite sex, had thus often in him its counterpart ina puzzled dramatic curiosity which constituted an equal ground ofinterest. 

This virtual admission of equality between the sexes, combined with hisLiberal principles to dispose him favourably towards the movement forFemale Emancipation. He approved of everything that had been done forthe higher instruction of women, and would, not very long ago, have supported their admission to the Franchise. But he was so muchdispleased by the more recent action of some of the lady advocates ofWomen's Rights, that, during the last year of his life, after variousmodifications of opinion, he frankly pledged himself to the oppositeview. He had even visions of writing a tragedy or drama in support ofit. The plot was roughly sketched, and some dialogue composed, though Ibelieve no trace of this remains. 

It is almost implied by all I have said, that he possessed in every moodthe charm of perfect simplicity of manner. On this point he resembledhis father. His tastes lay also in the direction of great simplicity oflife, though circumstances did not allow of his indulging them to thesame extent. It may interest those who never saw him to know that healways dressed as well as the occasion required, and always with greatindifference to the subject. In Florence he wore loose clothes whichwere adapted to the climate; in London his coats were cut by a goodtailor in whatever was the prevailing fashion; the change was simplywith him an incident of the situation. He had also a look of daintycleanliness which was heightened by the smooth healthy texture of theskin, and in later life by the silvery whiteness of his hair. 

His best photographic likenesses were those taken by Mr. Fradelle in1881, Mr. Cameron and Mr. William Grove in 1888 and 1889. 

Chapter 21

1887-1889

Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning--Removal to De Vere Gardens--Symptomsof failing Strength--New Poems; New Edition of his Works--Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady Martin--Primiero and Venice--Lettersto Miss Keep--The last Year in London--Asolo--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M. Smith. 

The last years of Mr. Browning's life were introduced by two auspiciousevents, in themselves of very unequal importance, but each in its ownway significant for his happiness and his health. One was his son'smarriage on October 4, 1887, to Miss Fannie Coddington, of New York, alady towards whom Mr. Barrett Browning had been strongly attracted whenhe was a very young man and she little more than a child; the other, hisown removal from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens, which took placein the previous June. The change of residence had long been with himonly a question of opportunity. He was once even in treaty for a pieceof ground at Kensington, and intended building a house. That in whichhe had lived for so many years had faults of construction and situationwhich the lapse of time rendered only more conspicuous; the Regent'sCanal Bill had also doomed it to demolition; and when an openingpresented itself for securing one in all essentials more suitable, hewas glad to seize it, though at the eleventh hour. He had mentally fixedon the new locality in those earlier days in which he still thought hisson might eventually settle in London; and it possessed at the same timemany advantages for himself. It was warmer and more sheltered than anywhich he could have found on the north side of the Park; and, in thatclose vicinity to Kensington Gardens, walking might be contemplated as apleasure, instead of mere compulsory motion from place to place. It wasonly too soon apparent that the time had passed when he could reap muchbenefit from the event; but he became aware from the first moment of hisinstallation in the new home that the conditions of physical life hadbecome more favourable for him. He found an almost pathetic pleasurein completing the internal arrangements of the well-built, commodioushouse. It seems, on looking back, as if the veil had dropped before hiseyes which sometimes shrouds the keenest vision in face of an impendingchange; and he had imagined, in spite of casual utterances whichdisclaimed the hope, that a new lease of life was being given to him. Hehad for several years been preparing for the more roomy dwelling whichhe would probably some day inhabit; and handsome pieces of old furniturehad been stowed away in the house in Warwick Crescent, pending theoccasion for their use. He loved antiquities of this kind, in a mannerwhich sometimes recalled his father's affection for old books; and mostof these had been bought in Venice, where frequent visits to thenoted curiosity-shops had been his one bond of habit with his touristcountrymen in that city. They matched the carved oak and massivegildings and valuable tapestries which had carried something of CasaGuidi into his first London home. Brass lamps that had once hung insidechapels in some Catholic church, had long occupied the place of thehabitual gaselier; and to these was added in the following year one ofsilver, also brought from Venice--the Jewish 'Sabbath lamp'. Anotheracquisition, made only a few months, if indeed so long, before he leftLondon for the last time, was that of a set of casts representing theSeasons, which were to stand at intervals on brackets in a certainunsightly space on his drawing-room wall; and he had said of these, which I think his son was procuring for him: 'Only my four little heads, and then I shall not buy another thing for the house'--in a tone ofchildlike satisfaction at his completed work. 

This summer he merely went to St. Moritz, where he and his sister were, for the greater part of their stay, again guests of Mrs. BloomfieldMoore. He was determined to give the London winter a fuller trial in themore promising circumstances of his new life, and there was much tobe done in De Vere Gardens after his return. His father's six thousandbooks, together with those he had himself accumulated, were for thefirst time to be spread out in their proper array, instead of crowdingtogether in rows, behind and behind each other. The new bookcases, whichcould stand in the large new study, were waiting to receive them. He didnot know until he tried to fulfil it how greatly the task would tax hisstrength. The library was, I believe, never completely arranged. 

During this winter of 1887-8 his friends first perceived that a changehad come over him. They did not realize that his life was drawing to aclose; it was difficult to do so when so much of the former elasticityremained; when he still proclaimed himself 'quite well' so long as hewas not definitely suffering. But he was often suffering; one terriblecold followed another. There was general evidence that he had at lastgrown old. He, however, made no distinct change in his mode of life. Oldhabits, suspended by his longer imprisonments to the house, were resumedas soon as he was set free. He still dined out; still attended theprivate view of every, or almost every art exhibition. He kept up hisunceasing correspondence--in one or two cases voluntarily added to it;though he would complain day after day that his fingers ached fromthe number of hours through which he had held his pen. One of theinteresting letters of this period was written to Mr. George Bainton, ofCoventry, to be used, as that gentleman tells me, in the preparation ofa lecture on the 'Art of Effective Written Composition'. It confirms thestatement I have had occasion to make, that no extraneous influence everpermanently impressed itself on Mr. Browning's style. 

29, De Vere Gardens: Oct. 6, '87. 

Dear Sir, --I was absent from London when your kind letter reachedthis house, to which I removed some time ago--hence the delay inacknowledging your kindness and replying, in some degree, to yourrequest. All I can say, however, is this much--and very little--that, by the indulgence of my father and mother, I was allowed to live my ownlife and choose my own course in it; which, having been the same fromthe beginning to the end, necessitated a permission to read nearly allsorts of books, in a well-stocked and very miscellaneous library. I hadno other direction than my parents' taste for whatever was highest andbest in literature; but I found out for myself many forgotten fieldswhich proved the richest of pastures: and, so far as a preference ofa particular 'style' is concerned, I believe mine was just the sameat first as at last. I cannot name any one author who exclusivelyinfluenced me in that respect, --as to the fittest expression ofthought--but thought itself had many impulsions from very varioussources, a matter not to your present purpose. I repeat, this isvery little to say, but all in my power--and it is heartily at yourservice--if not as of any value, at least as a proof that I gratefullyfeel your kindness, and am, dear Sir Yours very truly, Robert Browning. 

In December 1887 he wrote 'Rosny', the first poem in 'Asolando', andthat which perhaps most displays his old subtle dramatic power; it wasfollowed by 'Beatrice Signorini' and 'Flute-Music'. Of the 'Bad Dreams'two or three were also written in London, I think, during that winter. The 'Ponte dell' Angelo' was imagined during the next autumn in Venice. 'White Witchcraft' had been suggested in the same summer by a letterfrom a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toadsto be seen there. In the spring of 1888 he began revising his works forthe last, and now entirely uniform edition, which was issued in monthlyvolumes, and completed by the July of 1889. Important verbal correctionswere made in 'The Inn Album', though not, I think, in many of the laterpoems; but that in which he found most room for improvement was, verynaturally, 'Pauline'; and he wrote concerning it to Mr. Smith thefollowing interesting letter. 

29, De Vere Gardens, W. : Feb. 27, '88. 

My dear Smith, --When I received the Proofs of the 1st. Vol. On Fridayevening, I made sure of returning them next day--so accurately are theyprinted. But on looking at that unlucky 'Pauline', which I have nottouched for half a century, a sudden impulse came over me to take theopportunity of just correcting the most obvious faults of expression, versification and construction, --letting the _thoughts_--such as theyare--remain exactly as at first: I have only treated the imperfectexpression of these just as I have now and then done for an amateurfriend, if he asked me and I liked him enough to do so. Not a lineis displaced, none added, none taken away. I have just sent it to theprinter's with an explanatory word: and told him that he will have lesstrouble with all the rest of the volumes put together than with thislittle portion. I expect to return all the rest to-morrow or next day. 

As for the sketch--the portrait--it admits of no very superiortreatment: but, as it is the only one which makes me out youngish, --Ishould like to know if an artist could not strengthen the thing by apencil touch or two in a few minutes--improve the eyes, eyebrows, andmouth somewhat. The head too wants improvement: were Pen here he couldmanage it all in a moment. Ever truly yours, Robert Browning. 

Any attempt at modifying the expressed thoughts of his twenty-first yearwould have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with the workof another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, if ithad been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words what Ihave already asserted, that the power of detail correction either was, or had become by experience, very strong in him. 

The history of this summer of 1888 is partly given in a letter to LadyMartin. 

29, De Vere Gardens, W. : Aug. 12, '88. 

Dear Lady Martin, --The date of your kind letter, --June 18, --would affectme indeed, but for the good conscience I retain despite of appearances. So uncertain have I been as to the course we should take, --my sister andmyself--when the time came for leaving town, that it seemed as if'next week' might be the eventful week when all doubts woulddisappear--perhaps the strange cold weather and interminable rain madeit hard to venture from under one's roof even in fancy of being betterlodged elsewhere. This very day week it was the old story--cold--thenfollowed the suffocating eight or nine tropical days which forbade anymore delay, and we leave to-morrow for a place called Primiero, nearFeltre--where my son and his wife assure us we may be comfortably--andcoolly--housed, until we can accompany them to Venice, which we may stayat for a short time. You remember our troubles at Llangollen about thepurchase of a Venetian house . . . ? My son, however, nothing daunted, and acting under abler counsels than I was fortunate enough to obtain, *has obtained a still more desirable acquisition, in the shape of thewell-known Rezzonico Palace (that of Pope Clement 13th)--and, I believe, is to be congratulated on his bargain. I cannot profess the sameinterest in this as in the earlier object of his ambition, but am quitesatisfied by the evident satisfaction of the 'young people'. So, --by theold law of compensation, --while we may expect pleasant days abroad--ourchance is gone of once again enjoying your company in your own lovelyVale of Llangollen;--had we not been pulled otherwise by the inducementswe could not resist, --another term of delightful weeks--each tippedwith a sweet starry Sunday at the little church leading to theHouse Beautiful where we took our rest of an evening spent alwaysmemorably--this might have been our fortunate lot once again! As it is, perhaps we need more energetic treatment than we should get with you--for both of us are more oppressed than ever by the exigencies ofthe lengthy season, and require still more bracing air than thegently lulling temperature of Wales. May it be doing you, and dear SirTheodore, all the good you deserve--throwing in the share due to us, whomust forego it! With all love from us both, ever affectionately yoursRobert Browning. 

 * Those of Mr. Alexander Malcolm. 

He did start for Italy on the following day, but had become so ill, thathe was on the point of postponing his departure. He suffered throughoutthe journey as he had never suffered on any journey before; and duringhis first few days at Primiero, could only lead the life of an invalid. He rallied, however, as usual, under the potent effects of quiet, fresh air, and sunshine; and fully recovered his normal state beforeproceeding to Venice, where the continued sense of physical healthcombined with many extraneous circumstances to convert his proposedshort stay into a long one. A letter from the mountains, addressed to alady who had never been abroad, and to whom he sometimes wrote with moredescriptive detail than to other friends, gives a touching glimpse ofhis fresh delight in the beauties of nature, and his tender constantsympathy with the animal creation. 

Primiero: Sept. 7, '88. 

. . . . . 

'The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, ever since theclearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you in my last. It is, Iam more and more confirmed in believing, the most beautiful place Iwas ever resident in: far more so than Gressoney or even St. -Pierre deChartreuse. You would indeed delight in seeing the magnificence of themountains, --the range on either side, which morning and evening, inturn, transmute literally to gold, --I mean what I say. Their utterlybare ridges of peaks and crags of all shape, quite naked of verdure, glow like yellow ore; and, at times, there is a silver change, as thesun prevails or not. 

'The valley is one green luxuriance on all sides; Indian corn, withbeans, gourds, and even cabbages, filling up the interstices; and theflowers, though not presenting any novelty to my uninstructed eyes, yet surely more large and purely developed than I remember to have seenelsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must beabove ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me aspeculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if noinsect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck. . . . 

'. . . Did I tell you we had a little captive fox, --the most engagingof little vixens? To my great joy she has broken her chain and escaped, never to be recaptured, I trust. The original wild and untameable naturewas to be plainly discerned even in this early stage of the whelp'slife: she dug herself, with such baby feet, a huge hole, the useof which was evident, when, one day, she pounced thence on a strayturkey--allured within reach by the fragments of fox's breakfast, --theintruder escaping with the loss of his tail. The creature came back onenight to explore the old place of captivity, --ate some food and retired. For myself, --I continue absolutely well: I do not walk much, but formore than amends, am in the open air all day long. '

No less striking is a short extract from a letter written in Venice tothe same friend, Miss Keep. 

Ca' Alvise: Oct. 16, '88. 

'Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to mymind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroomwindow commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagullsflying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in along purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up tillpresently all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the orbsends before it a long column of its own essence apparently: so my daybegins. '

We feel, as we read these late, and even later words, that the lyricimagination was renewing itself in the incipient dissolution of otherpowers. It is the Browning of 'Pippa Passes' who speaks in them. 

He suffered less on the whole during the winter of 1888-9. It wasalready advanced when he returned to England; and the attacks of coldand asthma were either shorter or less frequent. He still maintainedthroughout the season his old social routine, not omitting his yearlyvisit, on the anniversary of Waterloo, to Lord Albemarle, itslast surviving veteran. He went for some days to Oxford during thecommemoration week, and had for the first, as also last time, thepleasure of Dr. Jowett's almost exclusive society at his beloved BalliolCollege. He proceeded with his new volume of poems. A short letterwritten to Professor Knight, June 16, and of which the occasion speaksfor itself, fitly closes the labours of his life; for it states his viewof the position and function of poetry, in one brief phrase, which mightform the text to an exhaustive treatise upon them. 

29, De Vere Gardens, W. : June 16, 1889. 

My dear Professor Knight, --I am delighted to hear that there is alikelihood of your establishing yourself in Glasgow, and illustratingLiterature as happily as you have expounded Philosophy at St. Andrews. It is certainly the right order of things: Philosophy first, and Poetry, which is its highest outcome, afterward--and much harm has been done byreversing the natural process. How capable you are of doing justiceto the highest philosophy embodied in poetry, your various studies ofWordsworth prove abundantly; and for the sake of both Literature andPhilosophy I wish you success with all my heart. 

Believe me, dear Professor Knight, yours very truly, Robert Browning. 

But he experienced, when the time came, more than his habitualdisinclination for leaving home. A distinct shrinking from the fatigueof going to Italy now added itself to it; for he had suffered whentravelling back in the previous winter, almost as much as on the outwardjourney, though he attributed the distress to a different cause: hisnerves were, he thought, shaken by the wearing discomforts incidentalon a broken tooth. He was for the first time painfully sensitive tothe vibration of the train. He had told his friends, both in Venice andLondon, that so far as he was able to determine, he would never returnto Italy. But it was necessary he should go somewhere, and he had noalternative plan. For a short time in this last summer he entertainedthe idea of a visit to Scotland; it had indeed definitely shaped itselfin his mind; but an incident, trivial in itself, though he did not thinkit so, destroyed the first scheme, and it was then practically too lateto form another. During the second week in August the weather broke. There could no longer be any question of the northward journey withouteven a fixed end in view. His son and daughter had taken possession oftheir new home, the Palazzo Rezzonico, and were anxious to see him andMiss Browning there; their wishes naturally had weight. The casting votein favour of Venice was given by a letter from Mrs. Bronson, proposingAsolo as the intermediate stage. She had fitted up for herself a littlesummer retreat there, and promised that her friends should, if theyjoined her, be also comfortably installed. The journey was this timepropitious. It was performed without imprudent haste, and Mr. Browningreached Asolo unfatigued and to all appearance well. 

He saw this, his first love among Italian cities, at a season of theyear more favourable to its beauty than even that of his first visit;yet he must himself have been surprised by the new rapture of admirationwhich it created in him, and which seemed to grow with his lengthenedstay. This state of mind was the more striking, that new symptoms of hisphysical decline were now becoming apparent, and were in themselves of adepressing kind. He wrote to a friend in England, that the atmosphereof Asolo, far from being oppressive, produced in him all the effects ofmountain air, and he was conscious of difficulty of breathing wheneverhe walked up hill. He also suffered, as the season advanced, greatinconvenience from cold. The rooms occupied by himself and his sisterwere both unprovided with fireplaces; and though the daily dinner withMrs. Bronson obviated the discomfort of the evenings, there remainedstill too many hours of the autumnal day in which the impossibility ofheating their own little apartment must have made itself unpleasantlyfelt. The latter drawback would have been averted by the fulfilment ofMr. Browning's first plan, to be in Venice by the beginning of October, and return to the comforts of his own home before the winter had quiteset in; but one slight motive for delay succeeded another, till at lasta more serious project introduced sufficient ground of detention. Heseemed possessed by a strange buoyancy--an almost feverish joy in life, which blunted all sensations of physical distress, or helped him tomisinterpret them. When warned against the imprudence of remaining wherehe knew he suffered from cold, and believed, rightly or wrongly, thathis asthmatic tendencies were increased, he would reply that he wasgrowing acclimatized--that he was quite well. And, in a fitful orsuperficial sense, he must have been so. 

His letters of that period are one continuous picture, glowing withhis impressions of the things which they describe. The same words willrepeat themselves as the same subject presents itself to his pen; butthe impulse to iteration scarcely ever affects us as mechanical. It seems always a fresh response to some new stimulus to thought orfeeling, which he has received. These reach him from every side. It isnot only the Asolo of this peaceful later time which has opened beforehim, but the Asolo of 'Pippa Passes' and 'Sordello'; that which firststamped itself on his imagination in the echoes of the Court life ofQueen Catharine, * and of the barbaric wars of the Eccelini. Some of hisletters dwell especially on these early historical associations: on thestrange sense of reopening the ancient chronicle which he had so deeplystudied fifty years before. The very phraseology of the old Italiantext, which I am certain he had never glanced at from that distant time, is audible in an account of the massacre of San Zenone, the scene ofwhich he has been visiting. To the same correspondent he says thathis two hours' drive to Asolo 'seemed to be a dream;' and again, afterdescribing, or, as he thinks, only trying to describe some beautifulfeature of the place, 'but it is indescribable!'

 * Catharine Cornaro, the dethroned queen of Cyprus. 

A letter addressed to Mrs. FitzGerald, October 8, 1889, is in part afitting sequel to that which he had written to her from the same spot, eleven years before. 

'. . . Fortunately there is little changed here: my oldAlbergo, --ruinous with earthquake--is down and done with--but fewnovelties are observable--except the regrettable one that the silkindustry has been transported elsewhere--to Cornuda and other placesnearer the main railway. No more Pippas--at least of the silk-windingsort!

'But the pretty type is far from extinct. 

'Autumn is beginning to paint the foliage, but thin it as well; andthe sea of fertility all round our height, which a month ago showedpomegranates and figs and chestnuts, --walnuts and apples all riotingtogether in full glory, --all this is daily disappearing. I say nothingof the olive and the vine. I find the Turret rather the worse forcareful weeding--the hawks which used to build there have been "shot forfood"--and the echo is sadly curtailed of its replies; still, thingsare the same in the main. Shall I ever see them again, when--as Isuppose--we leave for Venice in a fortnight? . . . '

In the midst of this imaginative delight he carried into his walks theold keen habits of observation. He would peer into the hedges for whatliving things were to be found there. He would whistle softly to thelizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his oldpower of attracting them. 

On the 15th of October he wrote to Mrs. Skirrow, after some preliminarydescription:

Then--such a view over the whole Lombard plain; not a site in view, or_approximate_ view at least, without its story. Autumn is now painting allthe abundance of verdure, --figs, pomegranates, chestnuts, and vines, andI don't know what else, --all in a wonderful confusion, --and now glowingwith all the colours of the rainbow. Some weeks back, the little townwas glorified by the visit of a decent theatrical troop who played in atheatre _in_side the old palace of Queen Catharine Cornaro--utilized alsoas a prison in which I am informed are at present full five if not sixmalefactors guilty of stealing grapes, and the like enormities. Well, the troop played for a fortnight together exceedingly well--high tragedyand low comedy--and the stage-box which I occupied cost 16 francs. Thetheatre had been out of use for six years, for we are out of the wayand only a baiting-place for a company pushing on to Venice. In fine, weshall stay here probably for a week or more, --and then proceed to Pen, at the Rezzonico; a month there, and then homewards! . . . 

I delight in finding that the beloved Husband and precious friendmanages to do without the old yoke about his neck, and enjoys himself asnever anybody had a better right to do. I continue to congratulate himon his emancipation and ourselves on a more frequent enjoyment of hiscompany in consequence. * Give him my true love; take mine, dearestfriend, --and my sister's love to you both goes with it. Everaffectionately yours Robert Browning. 

 * Mr. Skirrow had just resigned his post of Master in Chancery. 

The cry of 'homewards!' now frequently recurs in his letters. We find itin one written a week later to Mr. G. M. Smith, otherwise veryexpressive of his latest condition of mind and feeling. 

Asolo, Veneto, Italia: Oct. 22, '89. 

My dear Smith, --I was indeed delighted to get your letter two days ago--for there _are_ such accidents as the loss of a parcel, even when it hasbeen despatched from so important a place as this city--for a regularcity it is, you must know, with all the rights of one, --older far thanRome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name to theadjoining hills. 'Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the wallsstill surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, andyou even overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900souls--in the city Proper, that is--for the territory below and aroundcontains some 10, 000. But we are at the very top of things, garlandedabout, as it were, with a narrow line of houses, --some palatial, such asyou would be glad to see in London, --and above all towers the olddwelling of Queen Cornaro, who was forced to exchange her Kingdom ofCyprus for this pretty but petty dominion where she kept state in amimic Court, with Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, for her secretary--who hascommemorated the fact in his 'Asolani' or dialogues inspired by theplace: and I do assure you that, after some experience of beautifulsights in Italy and elsewhere I know nothing comparable to the view fromthe Queen's tower and palace, still perfect in every respect. Wheneveryou pay Pen and his wife the visit you are pledged to, * it will go hardbut you spend five hours in a journey to Asolo. The one thing I amdisappointed in is to find that the silk-cultivation with all the prettygirls who were engaged in it are transported to Cornuda and otherplaces, --nearer the railway, I suppose: and to this may be attributedthe decrease in the number of inhabitants. The weather when I wrote last_was_ 'blue and blazing--(at noon-day)--' but we share in the generalplague of rain, --had a famous storm yesterday: while to-day is blue andsunny as ever. Lastly, for your admonition: we _have_ a perfecttelegraphic communication; and at the passage above, where I put a * Iwas interrupted by the arrival of a telegram: thank you all the same foryour desire to relieve my anxiety. And now, to our immediate business--which is only to keep thanking you for your constant goodness, presentand future: do with the book just as you will. I fancy it is bigger inbulk than usual. As for the 'proofs'--I go at the end of the month toVenice, whither you will please to send whatever is necessary. . . . Ishall do well to say as little as possible of my good wishes for you andyour family, for it comes to much the same thing as wishing myselfprosperity: no matter, my sister's kindest regards shall excuse mine, and I will only add that I am, as ever, Affectionately yours RobertBrowning. 

A general quickening of affectionate impulse seemed part of this lastleap in the socket of the dying flame. 

Chapter 22

1889

Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo--Venice--Letter to Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett--Lines in the 'Athenaeum'--Letter to MissKeep--Illness--Death-- Funeral Ceremonial at Venice--Publicationof 'Asolando'--Interment in Poets' Corner. 

He had said in writing to Mrs. FitzGerald, 'Shall I ever see them' (thethings he is describing) 'again?' If not then, soon afterwards, heconceived a plan which was to insure his doing so. On a piece of groundbelonging to the old castle, stood the shell of a house. The twoconstituted one property which the Municipality of Asolo had hithertorefused to sell. It had been a dream of Mr. Browning's life to possessa dwelling, however small, in some beautiful spot, which should placehim beyond the necessity of constantly seeking a new summer resort, andabove the alternative of living at an inn, or accepting--as he sometimesfeared, abusing--the hospitality of his friends. He was suddenlyfascinated by the idea of buying this piece of ground; and, with theefficient help which his son could render during his absence, completingthe house, which should be christened 'Pippa's Tower'. It was evident, he said in one of his letters, that for his few remaining years hissummer wanderings must always end in Venice. What could he do betterthan secure for himself this resting-place by the way?

His offer of purchase was made through Mrs. Bronson, to Count Loredanoand other important members of the municipality, and their personalassent to it secured. But the town council was on the eve ofre-election; no important business could be transacted by it till afterthis event; and Mr. Browning awaited its decision till the end ofOctober at Asolo, and again throughout November in Venice, without fullyunderstanding the delay. The vote proved favourable; but the night onwhich it was taken was that of his death. 

The consent thus given would have been only a first step towards theaccomplishment of his wish. It was necessary that it should be ratifiedby the Prefecture of Treviso, in the district of which Asolo lies; andMr. Barrett Browning, who had determined to carry on the negotiations, met with subsequent opposition in the higher council. This has now, however, been happily overcome. 

A comprehensive interest attaches to one more letter of the Asolo time. It was addressed to Mr. Browning's brother-in-law, Mr. GeorgeMoulton-Barrett. 

Asolo, Veneto: Oct. 22, '89. 

My dear George, --It was a great pleasure to get your kind letter; thoughafter some delay. We were not in the Tyrol this year, but have been forsix weeks or more in this little place which strikes me, --as it didfifty years ago, which is something to say, considering that, properlyspeaking, it was the first spot of Italian soil I ever set foot upon--having proceeded to Venice by sea--and thence here. It is an ancientcity, older than Rome, and the scene of Queen Catharine Cornaro's exile, where she held a mock court, with all its attendants, on a miniaturescale; Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, being her secretary. Her palace isstill above us all, the old fortifications surround the hill-top, andcertain of the houses are stately--though the population is not above1, 000 souls: the province contains many more of course. But the immensecharm of the surrounding country is indescribable--I have never seen itslike--the Alps on one side, the Asolan mountains all round, --andopposite, the vast Lombard plain, --with indications of Venice, Padua, and the other cities, visible to a good eye on a clear day; whileeverywhere are sites of battles and sieges of bygone days, described infull by the historians of the Middle Ages. 

We have a valued friend here, Mrs. Bronson, who for years has been ourhostess at Venice, and now is in possession of a house here (built intothe old city wall)--she was induced to choose it through what I havesaid about the beauties of the place: and through her care and kindnesswe are comfortably lodged close by. We think of leaving in a week or sofor Venice--guests of Pen and his wife; and after a short stay with themwe shall return to London. Pen came to see us for a couple of days: Iwas hardly prepared for his surprise and admiration which quite equalledmy own and that of my sister. All is happily well with them--theirpalazzo excites the wonder of everybody, so great is Pen's cleverness, and extemporised architectural knowledge, as apparent in all he has donethere; why, _why_ will you not go and see him there? He and his wife arevery hospitable and receive many visitors. Have I told you that therewas a desecrated chapel which he has restored in honour of his mother--putting up there the inscription by Tommaseo now above Casa Guidi?

Fannie is all you say, --and most dear and precious to us all. . . . Pen's medal to which you refer, is awarded to him in spite of hiswritten renunciation of any sort of wish to contend for a prize. He willnow resume painting and sculpture--having been necessarily occupied withthe superintendence of his workmen--a matter capitally managed, I amtold. For the rest, both Sarianna and myself are very well; I have justsent off my new volume of verses for publication. The complete editionof the works of E. B. B. Begins in a few days. 

The second part of this letter is very forcibly written, and, in acertain sense, more important than the first; but I suppress it by thedesire of Mr. Browning's sister and son, and in complete concurrencewith their judgment in the matter. It was a systematic defence of theanger aroused in him by a lately published reference to his wife'sdeath; and though its reasonings were unanswerable as applied to thecauses of his emotion, they did not touch the manner in which it hadbeen displayed. The incident was one which deserved only to beforgotten; and if an injudicious act had not preserved its memory, noword of mine should recall it. Since, however, it has been thought fitto include the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald' in a widely circulatedBibliography of Mr. Browning's Works, * I owe it to him to say--what Ibelieve is only known to his sister and myself--that there was a momentin which he regretted those lines, and would willingly have withdrawnthem. This was the period, unfortunately short, which intervened betweenhis sending them to the 'Athenaeum', and their appearance there. Whenonce public opinion had expressed itself upon them in its too extremeforms of sympathy and condemnation, the pugnacity of his mind foundsupport in both, and regret was silenced if not destroyed. In so far ashis published words remained open to censure, I may also, withoutindelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the merelysympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhapsdisgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow. He spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though neverforgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which so unexpectedly methis eye, in a vividness of remembrance which was reality. 'I felt as ifshe had died yesterday, ' he said some days later to a friend, in halfdeprecation, half denial, of the too great fierceness of his reaction. He only recovered his balance in striking the counter-blow. That hecould be thus affected at an age usually destructive of the more violentemotions, is part of the mystery of those closing days which had alreadyovertaken him. 

 * That contained in Mr. Sharp's 'Life'. A still more recent publication gives the lines in full. 

By the first of November he was in Venice with his son and daughter; andduring the three following weeks was apparently well, though a physicianwhom he met at a dinner party, and to whom he had half jokingly givenhis pulse to feel, had learned from it that his days were numbered. Hewrote to Miss Keep on the 9th of the month:

'. . . Mrs. Bronson has bought a house at Asolo, and beautified itindeed, --niched as it is in an old tower of the fortifications stillpartly surrounding the city (for a city it is), and eighteen towers, more or less ruinous, are still discoverable there: it is indeed adelightful place. Meantime, to go on, --we came here, and had a pleasantwelcome from our hosts--who are truly magnificently lodged in thisvast palazzo which my son has really shown himself fit to possess, sosurprising are his restorations and improvements: the whole is all butcomplete, decorated, --that is, renewed admirably in all respects. 

'What strikes me as most noteworthy is the cheerfulness and comfort ofthe huge rooms. 

'The building is warmed throughout by a furnace and pipes. 

'Yesterday, on the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine, blue sky, --snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, eversuited my needs, bodily and intellectual, so well. 

'The first are satisfied--I am _quite_ well, every breathing inconveniencegone: and as for the latter, I got through whatever had given me troublein London. . . . '

But it was winter, even in Venice, and one day began with an actual fog. He insisted, notwithstanding, on taking his usual walk on the Lido. Hecaught a bronchial cold of which the symptoms were aggravated not onlyby the asthmatic tendency, but by what proved to be exhaustion of theheart; and believing as usual that his liver alone was at fault, he tooklittle food, and refused wine altogether. *

 * He always declined food when he was unwell; and maintained that in this respect the instinct of animals was far more just than the idea often prevailing among human beings that a failing appetite should be assisted or coerced. 

He did not yield to the sense of illness; he did not keep his bed. Somefeverish energy must have supported him through this avoidance of everymeasure which might have afforded even temporary strength or relief. OnFriday, the 29th, he wrote to a friend in London that he had waited thuslong for the final answer from Asolo, but would wait no longer. He wouldstart for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday of thefollowing week. It was true 'he had caught a cold; he felt sadlyasthmatic, scarcely fit to travel; but he hoped for the best, and wouldwrite again soon. ' He wrote again the following day, declaring himselfbetter. He had been punished, he said, for long-standing neglect ofhis 'provoking liver'; but a simple medicine, which he had often takenbefore, had this time also relieved the oppression of his chest; hisfriend was not to be uneasy about him; 'it was in his nature to getinto scrapes of this kind, but he always managed, somehow or other, toextricate himself from them. ' He concluded with fresh details of hishopes and plans. 

In the ensuing night the bronchial distress increased; and in themorning he consented to see his son's physician, Dr. Cini, whoseinvestigation of the case at once revealed to him its seriousness. Thepatient had been removed two days before, from the second storey of thehouse, which the family then inhabited, to an entresol apartment justabove the ground-floor, from which he could pass into the dining-roomwithout fatigue. Its lower ceilings gave him (erroneously) an impressionof greater warmth, and he had imagined himself benefited by the change. A freer circulation of air was now considered imperative, and he wascarried to Mrs. Browning's spacious bedroom, where an open fireplacesupplied both warmth and ventilation, and large windows admitted allthe sunshine of the Grand Canal. Everything was done for him whichprofessional skill and loving care could do. Mrs. Browning, assistedby her husband, and by a young lady who was then her guest, * filled theplace of the trained nurses until these could arrive; for a few daysthe impending calamity seemed even to have been averted. The bronchialattack was overcome. Mr. Browning had once walked from the bed tothe sofa; his sister, whose anxiety had perhaps been spared the fullknowledge of his state, could send comforting reports to his friendsat home. But the enfeebled heart had made its last effort. Attacksof faintness set in. Special signs of physical strength maintainedthemselves until within a few hours of the end. On Wednesday, December11, a consultation took place between Dr. Cini, Dr. Da Vigna, and Dr. Minich; and the opinion was then expressed for the first timethat recovery, though still possible, was not within the bounds ofprobability. Weakness, however, rapidly gained upon him towards theclose of the following day. Two hours before midnight of this Thursday, December 12, he breathed his last. 

 * Miss Evelyn Barclay, now Mrs. Douglas Giles. 

He had been a good patient. He took food and medicine whenever they wereoffered to him. Doctors and nurses became alike warmly interested inhim. His favourite among the latter was, I think, the Venetian, a widow, Margherita Fiori, a simple kindly creature who had known much sorrow. Toher he said, about five hours before the end, 'I feel much worse. Iknow now that I must die. ' He had shown at intervals a perception, evenconviction, of his danger; but the excitement of the brain, caused byexhaustion on the one hand and the necessary stimulants on the other, must have precluded all systematic consciousness of approaching death. He repeatedly assured his family that he was not suffering. 

A painful and urgent question now presented itself for solution: Whereshould his body find its last rest? He had said to his sister in theforegoing summer, that he wished to be buried wherever he might die: ifin England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy, with his wife. Circumstances all pointed to his removal to Florence; buta recent decree had prohibited further interment in the English Cemeterythere, and the town had no power to rescind it. When this was knownin Venice, that city begged for itself the privilege of retaining theillustrious guest, and rendering him the last honours. For the momentthe idea even recommended itself to Mr. Browning's son. But he feltbound to make a last effort in the direction of the burial at Florence;and was about to despatch a telegram, in which he invoked the mediationof Lord Dufferin, when all difficulties were laid at rest by a messagefrom the Dean of Westminster, conveying his assent to an interment inthe Abbey. * He had already telegraphed for information concerning thedate of the funeral, with a view to the memorial service, which heintended to hold on the same day. Nor would the further honour haveremained for even twenty-four hours ungranted, because unasked, but forthe belief prevailing among Mr. Browning's friends that there was noroom for its acceptance. 

 * The assent thus conveyed had assumed the form of an offer, and was characterized as such by the Dean himself. 

It was still necessary to provide for the more immediate removal of thebody. Local custom forbade its retention after the lapse of two days andnights; and only in view of the special circumstances of the case coulda short respite be granted to the family. Arrangements were therefore atonce made for a private service, to be conducted by the British Chaplainin one of the great halls of the Rezzonico Palace; and by two o'clock ofthe following day, Sunday, a large number of visitors and residents hadassembled there. The subsequent passage to the mortuary island of SanMichele had been organized by the city, and was to display so much ofthe character of a public pageant as the hurried preparation allowed. The chief municipal officers attended the service. When this had beenperformed, the coffin was carried by eight firemen (pompieri), arrayedin their distinctive uniform, to the massive, highly decorated municipalbarge (Barca delle Pompe funebri) which waited to receive it. It wasguarded during the transit by four 'uscieri' in 'gala' dress, twosergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two of the firemen bearingtorches: the remainder of these following in a smaller boat. The bargewas towed by a steam launch of the Royal Italian Marine. The chiefofficers of the city, the family and friends in their separate gondolas, completed the procession. On arriving at San Michele, the firemen againreceived their burden, and bore it to the chapel in which its place hadbeen reserved. 

When 'Pauline' first appeared, the Author had received, he never learnedfrom whom, a sprig of laurel enclosed with this quotation from the poem, Trust in signs and omens. 

Very beautiful garlands were now piled about his bier, offerings offriendship and affection. Conspicuous among these was the ceremonialstructure of metallic foliage and porcelain flowers, inscribed 'Veneziaa Roberto Browning', which represented the Municipality of Venice. Onthe coffin lay one comprehensive symbol of the fulfilled prophecy: awreath of laurel-leaves which his son had placed there. 

A final honour was decreed to the great English Poet by the city inwhich he had died; the affixing of a memorial tablet to the outer wallof the Rezzonico Palace. Since these pages were first written, thetablet has been placed. It bears the following inscription:

 A ROBERTO BROWNING

 MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO IL 12 DICEMBRE 1889 VENEZIA POSE

Below this, in the right-hand corner appear two lines selected from hisworks:

 Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, 'Italy'. 

Nor were these the only expressions of Italian respect and sympathy. Themunicipality of Florence sent its message of condolence. Asolo, poorin all but memories, itself bore the expenses of a mural tablet forthe house which Mr. Browning had occupied. It is now known that SignorCrispi would have appealed to Parliament to rescind the exclusionfrom the Florentine cemetery, if the motive for doing so had been lesspromptly removed. 

Mr. Browning's own country had indeed opened a way for the reunion ofthe husband and wife. The idea had rapidly shaped itself in the publicmind that, since they might not rest side by side in Italy, theyshould be placed together among the great of their own land; and it wasunderstood that the Dean would sanction Mrs. Browning's interment inthe Abbey, if a formal application to this end were made to him. ButMr. Barrett Browning could not reconcile himself to the thought ofdisturbing his mother's grave, so long consecrated to Florence by herwarm love and by its grateful remembrance; and at the desire of bothsurviving members of the family the suggestion was set aside. 

Two days after his temporary funeral, privately and at night, all thatremained of Robert Browning was conveyed to the railway station; andthence, by a trusted servant, to England. The family followed withintwenty-four hours, having made the necessary preparations for a longabsence from Venice; and, travelling with the utmost speed, arrived inLondon on the same day. The house in De Vere Gardens received its masteronce more. 

'Asolando' was published on the day of Mr. Browning's death. The reportof his illness had quickened public interest in the forthcoming work, and his son had the satisfaction of telling him of its already realizedsuccess, while he could still receive a warm, if momentary, pleasurefrom the intelligence. The circumstances of its appearance place itbeyond ordinary criticism; they place it beyond even an impartialanalysis of its contents. It includes one or two poems to which we wouldgladly assign a much earlier date; I have been told on good authoritythat we may do this in regard to one of them. It is difficult to referthe 'Epilogue' to a coherent mood of any period of its author's life. Itis certain, however, that by far the greater part of the little volumewas written in 1888-89, and I believe all that is most serious in itwas the product of the later year. It possesses for many readers theinspiration of farewell words; for all of us it has their pathos. 

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, on the 31stof December, 1889. In this tardy act of national recognition Englandclaimed her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of hiscountrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poetto his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs. Browning's poem, 'The Sleep', set to music by Dr. Bridge, were sung for the first time onthis occasion. 

Conclusion

A few words must still be said upon that purport and tendency of RobertBrowning's work, which has been defined by a few persons, and felt byvery many as his 'message'. 

The definition has been disputed on the ground of Art. We are told byMr. Sharp, though in somewhat different words, that the poet, qua poet, cannot deliver a 'message' such as directly addresses itself to theintellectual or moral sense; since his special appeal to us lies notthrough the substance, but through the form, or presentment, of what hehas had to say; since, therefore (by implication), in claiming for itan intellectual--as distinct from an aesthetic--character, we ignore itsfunction as poetry. 

It is difficult to argue justly, where the question at issue turnspractically on the meaning of a word. Mr. Sharp would, I think, be thefirst to admit this; and it appears to me that, in the present case, heso formulates his theory as to satisfy his artistic conscience, and yetleave room for the recognition of that intellectual quality so peculiarto Mr. Browning's verse. But what one member of the aesthetic school mayexpress with a certain reserve is proclaimed unreservedly by many more;and Mr. Sharp must forgive me, if for the moment I regard him as one ofthese; and if I oppose his arguments in the words of another poetand critic of poetry, whose claim to the double title is I believeundisputed--Mr. Roden Noel. I quote from an unpublished fragment of apublished article on Mr. Sharp's 'Life of Browning'. 

'Browning's message is an integral part of himself as writer; (whetheras poet, since we agree that he is a poet, were surely a too curiousand vain discussion;) but some of his finest things assuredly are theoutcome of certain very definite personal convictions. "The question, "Mr. Sharp says, "is not one of weighty message, but of artisticpresentation. " There seems to be no true contrast here. "The primaryconcern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression"--no--notthe primary concern. Since the critic adds--(for a poet) "this vehicleis language emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music by impassionedthought or sensation. " Exactly--"thought" it may be. Now part of thissame "thought" in Browning is the message. And therefore it is part ofhis "primary concern". "It is with presentment, " says Mr. Sharp, "thatthe artist has fundamentally to concern himself. " Granted: but it mustsurely be presentment of _something_. . . . I do not understand howto separate the substance from the form in true poetry. . . . If themessage be not well delivered, it does not constitute literature. Butif it be well delivered, the primary concern of the poet lay with themessage after all!'

More cogent objection has been taken to the character of the 'message'as judged from a philosophic point of view. It is the expression orexposition of a vivid a priori religious faith confirmed by positiveexperience; and it reflects as such a double order of thought, in whichtotally opposite mental activities are often forced into co-operationwith each other. Mr. Sharp says, this time quoting from Mr. Mortimer('Scottish Art Review', December 1889):

'His position in regard to the thought of the age is paradoxical, if notinconsistent. He is in advance of it in every respect but one, the mostimportant of all, the matter of fundamental principles; in these heis behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific in theirprecision of analysis; the sudden conclusion which he imposes upon themis transcendental and inept. '

This statement is relatively true. Mr. Browning's positive reasoningsoften do end with transcendental conclusions. They also start fromtranscendental premises. However closely his mind might follow thevisible order of experience, he never lost what was for him theconsciousness of a Supreme Eternal Will as having existed before it; henever lost the vision of an intelligent First Cause, as underlying allminor systems of causation. But such weaknesses as were involved inhis logical position are inherent to all the higher forms of naturaltheology when once it has been erected into a dogma. As maintained byMr. Browning, this belief held a saving clause, which removed it fromall dogmatic, hence all admissible grounds of controversy: the moredefinite or concrete conceptions of which it consists possessed nofinality for even his own mind; they represented for him an absolutetruth in contingent relations to it. No one felt more strongly than hethe contradictions involved in any conceivable system of Divine creationand government. No one knew better that every act and motive which weattribute to a Supreme Being is a virtual negation of His existence. He believed nevertheless that such a Being exists; and he accepted Hisreflection in the mirror of the human consciousness, as a necessarilyfalse image, but one which bears witness to the truth. 

His works rarely indicate this condition of feeling; it was not oftenapparent in his conversation. The faith which he had contingentlyaccepted became absolute for him from all practical points of view; itbecame subject to all the conditions of his humanity. On the ground ofabstract logic he was always ready to disavow it; the transcendentalimagination and the acknowledged limits of human reason claimed the lastword in its behalf. This philosophy of religion is distinctly suggestedin the fifth parable of 'Ferishtah's Fancies'. 

But even in defending what remains, from the most widely accepted pointof view, the validity of Mr. Browning's 'message', we concede the factthat it is most powerful when conveyed in its least explicit form; forthen alone does it bear, with the full weight of his poetic utterance, on the minds to which it is addressed. His challenge to Faith and Hopeimposes itself far less through any intellectual plea which he canadvance in its support, than through the unconscious testimony of allcreative genius to the marvel of conscious life; through the passionateaffirmation of his poetic and human nature, not only of the goodness andthe beauty of that life, but of its reality and its persistence. 

We are told by Mr. Sharp that a new star appeared in Orion on the nighton which Robert Browning died. The alleged fact is disproved by thestatement of the Astronomer Royal, to whom it has been submitted; but itwould have been a beautiful symbol of translation, such as affectionatefancy might gladly cherish if it were true. It is indeed true thaton that twelfth of December, a vivid centre of light and warmth wasextinguished upon our earth. The clouded brightness of many livesbears witness to the poet spirit which has departed, the glowing humanpresence which has passed away. We mourn the poet whom we have lost farless than we regret the man: for he had done his appointed work; andthat work remains to us. But the two beings were in truth inseparable. The man is always present in the poet; the poet was dominant in the man. This fact can never be absent from our loving remembrance of him. Nojust estimate of his life and character will fail to give it weight. 

Index

[The Index is included only as a rough guide to what is in this book. The numbers in brackets indicate the number of index entries: aseach reference, short or long, is counted as one, the numbers may bemisleading if observed too closely. ]

 Abel, Mr. (musician) [1] Adams, Mrs. Sarah Flower [2] Albemarle, Lord [1] Alford, Lady Marian [1] Allingham, Mr. William [1] American appreciation of Browning [1] Ampere, M. [1] Ancona [1] Anderson, Mr. (actor) [1] Arnold, Matthew [1] Arnould, Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) [1] Ashburton, Lady [1] Asolo [4] Associated Societies of Edinburgh, the [1] Athenaeum, the (review of 'Pauline') [2] Audierne (Finisterre, Brittany) [1] Azeglio, Massimo d' [1]

 Balzac's works, the Brownings' admiration of [2] Barrett, Miss Arabel [4] Barrett, Miss Henrietta (afterwards Mrs. Surtees Cook [Altham]) [2] Barrett, Mr. (the poet's father-in-law) [3] Barrett, Mr. Laurence (actor) [1] Bartoli's 'De' Simboli trasportati al Morale' [1] Benckhausen, Mr. (Russian consul-general) [1] Benzon, Mr. Ernest [1] Beranger, M. [2] Berdoe, Dr. Edward: his paper on 'Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine' [1] Biarritz [1] Blackwood's Magazine (on 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon') [1] Blagden, Miss Isa [5] Blundell, Dr. (physician) [1] Boyle, Dean (Salisbury) [1] Boyle, Miss (niece of the Earl of Cork) [2] Bridell-Fox, Mrs. [3] Bronson, Mrs. Arthur [5] Browning, Robert (grandfather of the poet): account of his life, two marriages, and two families [1] Browning, Mrs. (step-grandmother of the poet) [2] Browning, Robert (father of the poet): marriage; clerk in the Bank of England; comparison between him and his son; scholarly and artistic tastes; simplicity and genuineness of his character; his strong health; Mr. Locker-Lampson's account of him; his religious opinions; renewed relations with his father's widow and second family; death [10] Browning, Mrs. (the poet's mother): her family; her nervous temperament transmitted to her son; her death [3] Browning, Mr. Reuben (the poet's uncle), (incl. Lord Beaconsfield's appreciation of his Latinity) [2] Browning, Mr. William Shergold (the poet's uncle), (incl. His literary work) [2] Browning, Miss Jemima (the poet's aunt) [1] Browning, Miss (the poet's sister), (incl. Comes to live with her brother) [16] Browning, Robert: 1812-33--the notion of his Jewish extraction disproved; his family anciently established in Dorsetshire; his carelessness as to genealogical record; account of his grandfather's life and second marriage; his father's unhappy youth; his paternal grandmother; his father's position; comparison of father and son; the father's use of grotesque rhymes in teaching him; qualities he inherited from his mother; weak points in regard to health throughout his life; characteristics in early childhood; great quickness in learning; an amusing prank; passion for his mother; fondness for animals; his collections; experiences of school life; extensive reading in his father's library; early acquaintance with old books; his early attempts in verse; spurious poems in circulation; 'Incondita', the production of the twelve-year-old poet; introduction to Mr. Fox; his boyish love and lasting affection for Miss Flower; first acquaintance with Shelley's and Keats' works; his admiration for Shelley; home education under masters, his manly accomplishments; his studies chiefly literary; love of home; associates of his youth: Arnould and Domett; the Silverthornes; his choice of poetry as a profession; other possible professions considered; admiration for good acting; his father's support in his literary career; reads and digests Johnson's Dictionary by way of preparation [37] Browning, Robert: 1833-35--publication of 'Pauline'; correspondence with Mr. Fox; the poet's later opinion of it; characteristics of the poem; Mr. Fox's review of it; other notices; Browning's visit to Russia; contributions to the 'Monthly Repository': his first sonnet; the 'Trifler' (amateur periodical); a comic defence of debt; preparing to publish 'Paracelsus'; friendship with Count de Ripert-Monclar; Browning's treatment of 'Paracelsus'; the original Preface; John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner' [16] Browning, Robert: 1835-38--removal of the family to Hatcham; renewed intimacy with his grandfather's second family; friendly relations with Carlyle; recognition by men of the day; introduction to Macready; first meeting with Forster; Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth; at the 'Ion' supper; prospects of 'Strafford'; its production and reception; a personal description of him at this period; Mr. John Robertson and the 'Westminster Review' [11] Browning, Robert: 1838-44--first Italian journey; a striking experience of the voyage; preparations for writing other tragedies; meeting with Mr. John Kenyon; appearance of 'Sordello'; mental developments; 'Pippa Passes'; Alfred Domett on the critics; 'Bells and Pomegranates'; explanation of its title. List of the poems; 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon', written for Macready; Browning's later account and discussion of the breach between him and Macready; 'Colombe's Birthday'; other dramas; The 'Dramatic Lyrics'; 'The Lost Leader'; Browning's life before his second Italian journey; in Naples; visit to Mr. Trelawney at Leghorn [19] Browning, Robert: 1844-55--introduction to Miss Barrett; his admiration for her poetry; his proposal to her; reasons for concealing the engagement; their marriage; journey to Italy; life at Pisa; Florence; Browning's request for appointment on a British mission to the Vatican; settling in Casa Guidi; Fano and Ancona; 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells; birth of Browning's son, and death of his mother; wanderings in Italy: the Baths of Lucca; Venice; friendship with Margaret Fuller Ossoli; winter in Paris; Carlyle; George Sand. Close friendship with M. Joseph Milsand; Milsand's appreciation of Browning; new edition of Browning's poems; 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'; the Essay on Shelley; summer in London; introduction to Dante G. Rossetti; again in Florence; production of 'Colombe's Birthday' (1853); again at Lucca, Mr. And Mrs. W. Story; first winter in Rome; the Kembles; again in London (1855): Tennyson, Ruskin [32] Browning, Robert: 1855-61--publication of 'Men and Women'; 'Karshook'; 'Two in the Campagna'; another winter in Paris: Lady Elgin; legacies to the Brownings from Mr. Kenyon; Mr. Browning's little son; a carnival masquerade; Spiritualism; 'Sludge the Medium'; Count Ginnasi's clairvoyance; at Siena; Walter Savage Landor; illness of Mrs. Browning; American appreciation of Browning's works; his social life in Rome; last winter in Rome; Madame du Quaire; Mrs. Browning's illness and death; the comet of 1861 [18] Browning, Robert: 1861-69--Miss Blagden's helpful sympathy; journey to England; feeling in regard to funeral ceremonies; established in London with his son; Miss Arabel Barrett; visit to Biarritz; origin of 'The Ring and the Book'; his views as to the publication of letters; new edition of his works, selection of poems. Residence at Pornic; a meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave's; his literary position in 1865; his own estimate of it; death of his father; with his sister at Le Croisic; Academic honours: letter to the Master of Balliol (Dr. Scott); curious circumstance connected with the death of Miss A. Barrett; at Audierne; the uniform edition of his works; publication of 'The Ring and the Book'; inspiration of Pompilia [21] Browning, Robert: 1869-73--'Helen's Tower'; at St. -Aubin; escape from France during the war (1870); publication of 'Balaustion's Adventure' and 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'; 'Herve Riel' sold for the benefit of French sufferers by the war; 'Fifine at the Fair'; mistaken theories of that work; 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [8] Browning, Robert: 1873-78--his manner of life in London; his love of music; friendship with Miss Egerton-Smith; summers spent at Mers, Villers, Isle of Arran, and La Saisiaz; 'Aristophanes' Apology'; 'Pacchiarotto', 'The Inn Album', the translation of the 'Agamemnon'; description of a visit to Oxford; visit to Cambridge; offered the Rectorships of the Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrews; description of La Saisiaz; sudden death of Miss Egerton-Smith; the poem 'La Saisiaz': Browning's position towards Christianity; 'The Two Poets of Croisic', and Selections from his Works [13] Browning, Robert: 1878-81--he revisits Italy; Spluegen; Asolo; Venice; favourite Alpine retreats; friendly relations with Mrs. Arthur Bronson; life in Venice; a tragedy at Saint-Pierre; the first series of 'Dramatic Idyls'; the second series, 'Jocoseria', and 'Ferishtah's Fancies' [10] Browning, Robert: 1881-87--the Browning Society; Browning's attitude in regard to it; similar societies in England and America; wide diffusion of Browning's works in America; lines for the gravestone of Mr. Levi Thaxter; President of the New Shakspere Society, and member of the Wordsworth Society; Honorary President of the Associated Societies of Edinburgh; appreciation of his works in Italy; sonnet to Goldoni; attempt to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, Venice; Saint-Moritz; Mrs. Bloomfield Moore; at Llangollen; loss of old friends; Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academy; publication of 'Parleyings' [15] Browning, Robert: his character--constancy in friendship; optimism and belief in a direct Providence; political principles; character of his friendships; attitude towards his reviewers and his readers; attitude towards his works; his method of work; study of Spanish, Hebrew, and German; conversational powers and the stores of his memory; nervous peculiarities; his innate kindliness; attitude towards women; final views on the Women's Suffrage question [13] Browning, Robert: his last years--marriage of his son; his change of abode; symptoms of declining strength; new poems, and revision of the old; journey to Italy: Primiero and Venice; last winter in England: visit to Balliol College; last visit to Italy: Asolo once more; proposed purchase of land there; the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald'; with his son at Palazzo Rezzonico; last illness; death; funeral honours in Italy; 'Asolando' published on the day of his death; his burial in Westminster Abbey; the purport and tendency of his work [16] Browning, Robert: letters to--Bainton, Mr. George (Coventry) [1] Blagden, Miss Isa [12] Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [8] Flower, Miss [2] Fox, Mr. [4] Haworth, Miss E. F. [3] Hickey, Miss E. H. [1] Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the 'Daily News') [2] Hill, Mrs. Frank [1] Keep, Miss [3] Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [5] Lee, Miss (Maidstone) [1] Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [4] Martin, Mrs. Theodore (afterwards Lady) [2] Moulton-Barrett, Mr. G. [2] Quaire, Madame du [1] Robertson, Mr. John (editor of 'Westminster Review', 1838) [1] Scott, Rev. Dr. [1] Skirrow, Mrs. Charles [4] Smith, Mr. G. M. [3] Browning, Robert: Works of--'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' [2] 'A Death in the Desert' [2] 'Agamemnon' [1] 'Andrea del Sarto' [1] 'Aristophanes' Apology' [1] 'Artemis Prologuizes' [1] 'Asolando' [5] 'At the Mermaid' [2] 'A Woman's Last Word' [1] 'Bad Dreams' [1] 'Balaustion's Adventure' [3] 'Bean Stripes' [1] 'Beatrice Signorini' [1] 'Bells and Pomegranates' (incl. Meaning of the title, and list of the dramas and poems) [7] 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom' [1] 'Bishop Blougram' [1] 'By the Fireside' [1] 'Childe Roland' [1] 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day' [2] 'Cleon' [1] 'Colombe's Birthday' [4] 'Crescentius, the Pope's Legate' [1] 'Cristina' [1] 'Dramatic Idyls' [4] 'Dramatic Lyrics' [1] 'Dramatis Personae' [5] 'Essay on Shelley' [1] 'Ferishtah's Fancies' [2] 'Fifine at the Fair' [2] 'Flute-Music' [1] 'Goldoni', sonnet to [1] 'Helen's Tower' (sonnet) [1] 'Herve Riel' (ballad) [2] 'Home Thoughts from the Sea' [1] 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' [1] 'In a Balcony' [2] 'In a Gondola' [2] 'Ivan Ivanovitch' [3] 'James Lee's Wife' [3] 'Jocoseria' [1] 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' [1] 'King Victor and King Charles' [3] 'La Saisiaz' [4] 'Luria' [1] 'Madhouse Cells' [1] 'Martin Relph' [1] 'May and Death' [1] 'Men and Women' [3] 'Ned Bratts' [1] 'Numpholeptos' [1] 'One Word More' [2] 'Pacchiarotto' [3] 'Paracelsus' [8] 'Parleyings' [2] 'Pauline' [10] 'Pippa Passes' (incl. The Preface to) [5] 'Ponte dell' Angelo' [1] 'Porphyria's Lover' [1] 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau' [3] 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' [3] 'Rosny' [1] 'Saint Martin's Summer' [1] 'Saul' [1] 'Sludge the Medium' [2] 'Sordello' [7] 'Strafford' [3] 'The Epistle of Karshish' [1] 'The Flight of the Duchess' [1] 'The Inn Album' [3] 'The Lost Leader' [1] 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' [1] 'The Return of the Druses' [3] 'The Ring and the Book' [3] 'The Two Poets of Croisic' [2] 'The Worst of It' [1] 'Two in the Campagna' [1] 'White Witchcraft' [1] 'Why I am a Liberal' (sonnet) [2] 'Women and Roses' [1] Browning, Mrs. (the poet's wife: Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett): Browning's introduction to her; her ill health; the reasons for their secret marriage; causes of her ill health; happiness of her married life; estrangement from her father; her visit to Mrs. Theodore Martin; 'Aurora Leigh': her methods of work; a legacy from Mr. Kenyon; her feeling about Spiritualism; success of 'Aurora Leigh'; her sister's illness and death; her own death; proposed reinterment in Westminster Abbey [14] Browning, Mrs. : extracts from her letters--on her husband's devotion; life in Pisa, and on French literature; Vallombrosa; their acquaintances in Florence; their dwelling in Piazza Pitti; 'Father Prout's' cure for a sore throat; apartments in the Casa Guidi; visits to Fano and Ancona; Phelps's production of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; birth of her son; the effect of his mother's death on her husband; wanderings in northern Italy; the neighbourhood of Lucca; Venice; life in Paris (1851); esteem for her husband's family; description of George Sand; the personal appearance of that lady; her impression of M. Joseph Milsand; the first performance of 'Colombe's Birthday' (1853); Rome: death in the Story family; Mrs. Sartoris and the Kembles; society in Rome; a visit to Mr. Ruskin; about 'Penini'; description of a carnival masquerade (Florence, 1857); impressions of Landor; tribute to the unselfish character of her father-in-law; on her husband's work; on the contrast of his (then) appreciation in England and America; Massimo d' Azeglio; on her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook); on the death of Count Cavour [34] Browning, Mr. Robert Wiedemann Barrett (the poet's son): his birth; incidents of his childhood; his pet-name--Penini, Peni, Pen; in charge of Miss Isa Blagden on his mother's death; taken to England by his father; manner of his education; studying art in Antwerp; with his father in Venice (1885); his marriage; purchase of the Rezzonico Palace (Venice); death of his father there [14] Browning, Mrs. R. Barrett [2] Browning, Mr. Robert Jardine (Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales) [1] Browning Society, the: its establishment [1] Brownlow, Lord [1] Bruce, Lady Augusta [1] Bruce, Lady Charlotte (wife of Mr. F. Locker) [1] Buckstone, Mr. (actor) [1] Buloz, M. [1] Burne Jones, Mr. [2] Burns, Major (son of the poet) [1]

 Californian Railway time-table edition of Browning's poems [1] Cambo [1] Cambridge, Browning's visit to [1] Campbell Dykes, Mr. J. [6] Carducci, Countess (Rome) [1] Carlyle, Mr. Thomas [6] Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas (incl. Anecdote) [2] Carnarvon, Lord [1] Carnival masquerade, a [1] Cartwright, Mr. And Mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3] Casa Guidi (Browning's residence at Florence) [2] Cattermole, Mr. [1] Cavour, Count, death of [1] Channel, Mr. (afterwards Sir William), and Frank [1] Chapman & Hall, Messrs. (publishers) [2] Cholmondeley, Mr. (Condover) [3] Chorley, Mr. [1] Cini, Dr. (Venice) [1] Clairvoyance, an instance of [1] Coddington, Miss Fannie (afterwards Mrs. R. Barrett Browning) [1] Colvin, Mr. Sidney [1] Corkran, Mrs. Fraser [2] Cornaro, Catharine [3] Cornhill Magazine: why 'Herve Riel' appeared in it [2] Corson, Professor [1] Crosse, Mrs. Andrew [1] 'Croxall's Fables', Browning's early fondness for [1] Curtis, Mr. [1]

 Dale, Mr. (actor) [1] Davidson, Captain (of the 'Norham Castle', 1838) [2] Davies, Rev. Llewellyn [1] Debt, Browning's mock defence of (in the 'Trifler') [1] Dickens, Charles [5] Domett, Alfred (incl. 'On a certain Critique of Pippa Passes') [3] Dourlans, M. Gustave [1] Doyle, Sir Francis H. [1] Dufferin, Lord [1] Dulwich Gallery [1]

 Eclectic Review, the (review of Browning's works) [1] Eden, Mr. Frederic [1] Egerton-Smith, Miss [2] Elgin, Lady [3] Elstree (Macready's residence) [2] Elton, Mr. (actor) [1] Engadine, the [2] Examiner (review of 'Paracelsus') [1]

 Fano [1] 'Father Prout' (Mr. Mahoney) [1] Faucit, Miss Helen--as Lady Carlisle in 'Strafford'; as Mildred in 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'; as Colombe in 'Colombe's Birthday' [3] Fiori, Margherita (Browning's nurse) [1] Fisher, Mr. (artist) [1] Fitzgerald, Mr. Edward [1] Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. [1] Florence [6] Flower, Miss [5] Flower, Mr. Benjamin (editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer') [1] Fontainebleau [1] Forster, Mr. John [11] Fortia, Marquis de [1] Fox, Miss Caroline [1] Fox, Miss Sarah [1] Fox, Mr. W. J. (incl. Election for Oldham) [10] Furnivall, Dr. [5]

 Gaisford, Mr. , and Lady Alice [1] Galuppi, Baldassaro [1] Gibraltar [1] Ginnasi, Count (Ravenna) [1] Giustiniani-Recanati, Palazzo (Venice) [1] Gladstone, Mr. [1] Glasgow, University of [1] Goldoni, Browning's sonnet to [1] Goltz, M. (Austrian Minister at Rome) [1] Gosse's 'Personalia' [4] Green, Mr. [1] Gressoney Saint-Jean [1] Guerande (Brittany) [1] Guidi Palace (Casa Guidi) [1] Gurney, Rev. Archer [1]

 Hanmer, Sir John (afterwards Lord Hanmer) [1] Haworth, Miss Euphrasia Fanny [2] Haworth, Mr. Frederick [1] Hawthorne, Nathaniel [1] Hazlitt, Mr. [1] Heyermans, M. (artist; Antwerp) [1] Hickey, Miss E. H. [2] Hill, Mr. Frank (editor of the 'Daily News', 1884) [1] Hood, Mr. Thomas [1] Horne, Mr. [1] Hugo, Victor [1]

 Ion, the Ion supper [1]

 Jameson, Mrs. Anna [1] Jebb-Dyke, Mrs. [1] Jerningham, Miss [1] Jersey [1] Jewsbury, Miss Geraldine [1] Joachim, Professor [1] Jones, Mr. Edward Burne [1] Jones, Rev. Thomas [1] Jowett, Dr. [3]

 Kean, Mr. Edmund [1] Keats [1] Keepsake, The [1] Kemble, Mrs. Fanny [1] Kenyon, Mr. John [5] King, Mr. Joseph [1] Kirkup, Mr. [2] Knight, Professor (St. Andrews) [2]

 Lamartine, M. De [1] Lamb, Charles [1] Landor, Walter Savage [5] La Saisiaz [2] Layard, Sir Henry and Lady [2] Le Croisic (Brittany) [1] Leigh Hunt [1] Leighton, Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederic) [2] 'Les Charmettes' (Chambery: Rousseau's residence) [1] Le Strange, Mrs. Guy [1] Lewis, Miss (Harpton) [1] Literary Gazette (review of 'Pauline') [1] Literary World, the Boston, U. S. (on 'Colombe's Birthday') [1] Llangollen [2] Llantysilio Church [1] Lloyd, Captain [1] Locker, Mr. F. (now Mr. Locker-Lampson) [2] Lockhart [1] Lucca [4] Lyons, Mr. (son of Sir Edmund) [1] Lytton, Mr. (now Lord) [3]

 Maclise, Mr. (artist) [2] Macready, Mr. [5] Macready, Willy (eldest son of the actor): his illustrations to the 'Pied Piper' [1] Mahoney, Rev. Francis ('Father Prout') [1] Manning, Rev. Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) [1] Manzoni Palace (Venice) [1] Martin, Lady [3] Martin, Sir Theodore [1] Martineau, Miss [4] Mazzini, Signor [1] Melvill, Rev. H. (afterwards Canon) [2] Meredith, Mr. George [1] Mill, Mr. J. S. [3] Milnes, Mr. Monckton (afterwards Lord Houghton) [4] Milsand, M. Joseph [4] Minich, Dr. (Venice) [1] Mitford, Miss [3] Mocenigo, Countess (Venice) [1] Mohl, Madame [2] Monthly Repository (incl. Browning's contributions to) [4] Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield [2] Morgan, Lady [1] Morison, Mr. James Cotter [1] Mortimer, Mr. [2] Moulton-Barrett, Mr. George [3] Moxon, Mr. (publisher) [4] Murray, Miss Alma (actress) [1] Musset, Alfred and Paul de [1]

 Naples [1] National Magazine, the: Mrs. Browning's portrait in (1859) [1] Nencioni, Professor (Florence) [1] Nettleship, Mr. J. T. [1] New Shakspere Society [1] Noel, Mr. Roden [1]

 Ogle, Dr. John [1] Ogle, Miss (author of 'A Lost Love') [1] Osbaldistone, Mr. (manager of Covent Garden Theatre, 1836) [1] Ossoli, Countess Margaret Fuller [1] Oxford (incl. Browning's visit to, 1877) [2]

 Palgrave, Mr. Francis [1] Palgrave, Mr. Reginald [1] Paris [2] Patterson, Monsignor [1] Phelps, Mr. (actor) [3] Pirate-ship, wreck of [1] Pisa [1] Poetical contest, a Roman [1] Pollock, Sir Frederick (1843) [1] Pornic [2] Powell, Mr. Thomas [2] Power, Miss (editor of 'The Keepsake') [1] Powers, Mr. (American sculptor) [1] Primiero [1] Prinsep, Mr. Val [6] Pritchard, Captain [1] Procter, Mr. Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall) [4]

 Quaire, Madame du [2] Quarles' Emblemes [1]

 Ravenna [1] Ready, the two Misses, preparatory school [3] Ready, Rev. Thomas (Browning's first schoolmaster) [2] Regan, Miss [1] Reid, Mr. Andrew [1] Relfe, Mr. John (musician) [1] Rezzonico Palace (Venice), the [2] Richmond, Rev. Thomas [1] Ripert-Monclar, Count de [4] Robertson, Mr. John (editor of 'Westminster Review', 1838) [1] Robinson, Miss Mary (now Mrs. James Darmesteter) [1] Rome [2] Rossetti, Mr. Dante Gabriel (incl. Death of his wife) [4] Ruskin, Mr. [1] Russell, Lady William [1] Russell, Mr. Odo (afterwards Lord Ampthill) [2]

 Sabatier, Madame [1] Saleve, the [2] Sand, George [2] Sartoris, Mrs. [4] Saunders & Otley, Messrs. [2] Scott, Rev. Dr. (Master of Balliol, 1867) [1] Scotti, Mr. [1] Scottish Art Review, the, Mr. Mortimer's 'Note on Browning' in [1] Seraverra [1] Sharp, Mr. [4] Shelley (incl. Browning's Essay on; his grave) [4] Shrewsbury, Lord [1] Sidgwick, Mr. A. [1] Siena [2] Silverthorne, Mrs. [2] Simeon, Sir John [1] Smith, Miss (second wife of the poet's grandfather) [1] Smith, Mr. George Murray [1] Southey [1] Spezzia [1] Spiritualism (incl. A pretending medium) [2] Spluegen [1] St. Andrews University [1] St. -Aubin (M. Milsand's residence) [2] St. -Enogat (near Dinard) [1] St. -Pierre la Chartreuse (incl. A tragic occurrence there) [2] Stanley, Dean [1] Stanley, Lady Augusta [1] Stendhal, Henri [2] Sterling, Mr. John [1] Stirling, Mrs. (actress) [1] Story, Mr. And Mrs. William [7] Sturtevant, Miss [1] Sue, Eugene [1]

 Tablets, Memorial [3] Tait's Magazine [1] Talfourd, Serjeant [3] Taylor, Sir Henry [1] Tennyson, Mr. Alfred (afterwards Lord Tennyson) [2] Tennyson, Mr. Frederick [1] Thackeray, Miss Annie [1] Thackeray, Mr. W. M. [2] Thaxter, Mrs. (Celia) (Boston, U. S. ) [1] Thaxter, Mr. Levi (Boston, U. S. ) [1] Thomson, Mr. James: his application of the term 'Gothic' to Browning's work [1] Tittle, Miss Margaret [1] Trelawney, Mr. E. J. (1844) [1] Trifler, The (amateur magazine) [1] True Sun, the (review of 'Strafford') [1]

 Universo, Hotel dell' (Venice) [1]

 Vallombrosa [1] Venice [6] Vigna, Dr. Da (Venice) [1]

 Wagner [1] Warburton, Mr. Eliot [1] Watts, Dr. [1] Westminster, Dean of [2] Widman, Counts [1] Wiedemann, Mr. William [1] Williams, Rev. J. D. W. (vicar of Bottisham, Cambs. ) [1] Wilson (Mrs. Browning's maid) [6] Wilson, Mr. Effingham (publisher) [1] Wiseman, Mrs. (mother of Cardinal Wiseman) [1] Wolseley, Lady [1] Wolseley, Lord [1] Woolner, Mr. [1] Wordsworth [3] Wordsworth Society, the [2]