Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

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

  ‘It seems but yesterday that I sat by his [Mr. Elton’s] side in the green-room at the reading of Robert Browning’s beautiful drama, ‘A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon’. As a rule Mr. Macready always read the new plays. But owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was entrusted on this occasion to the head prompter, — a clever man in his way, but wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning’s meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My “cruel father” [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of the verse. But somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few of the actors during the rehearsals chose to continue to misunderstand the text, and never took the interest in the play which they would have done had Mr. Macready read it.’

  Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the widening perspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare as he did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred, that her ‘perfect behaviour as a woman’ and her ‘admirable playing as an actress’ had been (or at all events were) to him ‘the one gratifying circumstance connected with it.’

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

  * See Forster’s ‘Life of Dickens’.

  ‘Colombe’s Birthday’ was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;* and afterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit, who created the principal part. It was again performed for the Browning Society in 1885,** and although Miss Alma Murray, as Colombe, was almost entirely supported by amateurs, the result fully justified Miss Mary Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter) in writing immediately afterwards in the Boston ‘Literary World’:***

  * Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston.

  ** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning

  Society, and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King,

  in January 1882.

  *** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons’

  ‘Introduction to the Study of Browning’.

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

  Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting, and alludes in his ‘Personalia’ to the greatly increased knowledge of the stage which its minute directions displayed. They told also of sad experience in the sacrifice of the poet which the play-writer so often exacts: since they included the proviso that unless a very good Valence could be found, a certain speech of his should be left out. That speech is very important to the poetic, and not less to the moral, purpose of the play: the triumph of unworldly affections. It is that in which Valence defies the platitudes so often launched against rank and power, and shows that these may be very beautiful things — in which he pleads for his rival, and against his own heart. He is the better man of the two, and Colombe has fallen genuinely in love with him. But the instincts of sovereignty are not outgrown in one day however eventful, and the young duchess has shown herself amply endowed with them. The Prince’s offer promised much, and it held still more. The time may come when she will need that crowning memory of her husband’s unselfishness and truth, not to regret what she has done.

  ‘King Victor and King Charles’ and ‘The Return of the Druses’ are both admitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage; and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted to witnessing the revival of ‘Strafford’ or ‘A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon’, from neither of which the best amateur performance could remove the stigma of past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friend belonging to the Browning Society told him she had been seriously occupied with the possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assented to the idea with a simplicity that was almost touching, ‘It was written for the stage,’ he said, ‘and has only one scene.’ He knew, however, that the single scene was far from obviating all the difficulties of the case, and that the Society, with its limited means, did the best it could.

  I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in ‘King Victor and King Charles’ which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while its occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in which Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for duty’s sake to retain the crown, though he will earn, by so doing, neither the credit of a virtuous deed nor the sure, persistent consciousness of having performed one.

  Four poems of the ‘Dramatic Lyrics’ had appeared, as I have said, in the ‘Monthly Repository’. Six of those included in the ‘Dramatic Lyrics and Romances’ were first published in ‘Hood’s Magazine’ from June 1844 to April 1845, a month before Hood’s death. These poems were, ‘The Laboratory’, ‘Claret and Tokay’, ‘Garden Fancies’, ‘The Boy and the Angel’, ‘The Tomb at St. Praxed’s’, and ‘The Flight of the Duchess’. Mr. Hood’s health had given way under stress of work, and Mr. Browning with other friends thus came forward to help him. The fact deserves remembering in connection with his subsequent unbroken rule never to write for magazines. He might always have made exceptions for friendly or philanthropic objects; the appearance of ‘Herve Riel’ in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’, 1870, indeed proves that it was so. But the offer of a blank cheque would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to this concession, as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literary purpose.

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

  The first proof of ‘Artemis Prologuizes’ had the following note:

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

  * When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for

  the ‘Handbook’, he spoke as if his illness had interrupted

  the work, not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I

  think, the more striking.

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

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

  ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ and another poem were written in May 1842 for Mr. Macready’s little eldest son, Willy, who was confined to the house by illness, and who was to amuse himself by illustrating the poems as well as reading them;* and the first of these, though
not intended for publication, was added to the ‘Dramatic Lyrics’, because some columns of that number of ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ still required filling. It is perhaps not known that the second was ‘Crescentius, the Pope’s Legate’: now included in ‘Asolando’.

  * Miss Browning has lately found some of the illustrations,

  and the touching childish letter together with which

  her brother received them.

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

  ‘The Lost Leader’ has given rise to periodical questionings continued until the present day, as to the person indicated in its title. Mr. Browning answered or anticipated them fifteen years ago in a letter to Miss Lee, of West Peckham, Maidstone. It was his reply to an application in verse made to him in their very young days by herself and two other members of her family, the manner of which seems to have unusually pleased him.

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

  Dear Friends, — Your letter has made a round to reach me — hence the delay in replying to it — which you will therefore pardon. I have been asked the question you put to me — tho’ never asked so poetically and so pleasantly — I suppose a score of times: and I can only answer, with something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in my mind — but simply as ‘a model’; you know, an artist takes one or two striking traits in the features of his ‘model’, and uses them to start his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good man or woman who happens to be ‘sitting’ for nose and eye.

  I thought of the great Poet’s abandonment of liberalism, at an unlucky juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But — once call my fancy-portrait ‘Wordsworth’ — and how much more ought one to say, — how much more would not I have attempted to say!

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

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

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

  ‘. . . I am getting to love painting as I did once. Do you know I was a young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing? My father had faith in me, and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies, I well know, a certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil and black currant jam-juice (paint being rank poison, as they said when I sucked my brushes) with his (my father’s) note in one corner, “R. B., aetat. two years three months.” “How fast, alas, our days we spend — How vain they be, how soon they end!” I am going to print “Victor”, however, by February, and there is one thing not so badly painted in there — oh, let me tell you. I chanced to call on Forster the other day, and he pressed me into committing verse on the instant, not the minute, in Maclise’s behalf, who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, for the British Institution. Forster described it well — but I could do nothing better, than this wooden ware — (all the “properties”, as we say, were given, and the problem was how to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason).

  I send my heart up to thee, all my heart

  In this my singing!

  For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;

  The very night is clinging

  Closer to Venice’ streets to leave me space

  Above me, whence thy face

  May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

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

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

  New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey: Tuesday morning.

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

  And how can I thank you enough for this good news — all this music I shall be so thoroughly gratified to hear? Ever yours faithfully, Robert Browning.

  His last letter to her was written in 1845; the subject being a concert of her own sacred music which she was about to give; and again, although more slightly, I anticipate the course of events, in order to give it in its natural connection with the present one. Mr. Browning was now engaged to be married, and the last ring of youthful levity had disappeared from his tone; but neither the new happiness nor the new responsibility had weakened his interest in his boyhood’s friend. Miss Flower must then have been slowly dying, and the closing words of the letter have the solemnity of a last farewell.

  Sunday.

  Dear Miss Flower, — I was very foolishly surprized at the sorrowful finical notice you mention: foolishly; for, God help us, how else is it with all critics of everything — don’t I hear them talk and see them write? I dare-say he admires you as he said.

  For me, I never had another feeling than entire admiration for your music — entire admiration — I put it apart from all other English music I know, and fully believe in it as the music we all waited for.

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

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

  In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship, it is believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance of a young Neapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris; and they became such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together. Mr. Scotti was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged their conveyance, and did all such bargaining in their joint interest as the habits of his country required. ‘As I write,’ Mr. Browning said in a letter to his sister, ‘I hear him disputing our bill in the next room. He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles when we have used only two.’ At Rome they spent most of their evenings with an old acquaintance of Mr. Browning’s, then Countess Carducci, and she pronounced Mr. Scotti the handsomest man she had ever seen. He certainly bore no appearance of being the least prosperous. But he blew out his brains soon after he and his new friend had parted; and I do not think the act was ever fully accounted for.

  It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went to Leghorn to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter of introduction. He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. Val Prinsep, but chiefly in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr. Trelawney had displayed during its course. A surgeon was occupied all the time in probing his leg for a bullet which had been lodged there some years before, and had lately made itself felt; and he showed himself absolutely indifferent to the pain of the operation. Mr. Browning’s main object in paying the visit had been, naturally, to speak with one who had known Byron and been the last to see Shelley alive; but we only hear of the two poets that they formed in part the subject of their conversation. He reached England, again, we suppose, through Germany — since he avoided Paris as before.


  It has been asserted by persons otherwise well informed, that on this, if not on his previous Italian journey, Mr. Browning became acquainted with Stendhal, then French Consul at Civita Vecchia, and that he imbibed from the great novelist a taste for curiosities of Italian family history, which ultimately led him in the direction of the Franceschini case. It is certain that he profoundly admired this writer, and if he was not, at some time or other, introduced to him it was because the opportunity did not occur. But there is abundant evidence that no introduction took place, and quite sufficient proof that none was possible. Stendhal died in Paris in March 1842; and granting that he was at Civita Vecchia when the poet made his earlier voyage — no certainty even while he held the appointment — the ship cannot have touched there on its way to Trieste. It is also a mistake to suppose that Mr. Browning was specially interested in ancient chronicles, as such. This was one of the points on which he distinctly differed from his father. He took his dramatic subjects wherever he found them, and any historical research which they ultimately involved was undertaken for purposes of verification. ‘Sordello’ alone may have been conceived on a rather different plan, and I have no authority whatever for admitting that it was so. The discovery of the record of the Franceschini case was, as its author has everywhere declared, an accident.