Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

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

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

  ‘. . . My brother George sent me a number of the “National Magazine” with my face in it, after Marshall Wood’s medallion. My comfort is that my greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not go far with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have its due weight in arresting the sale of “Aurora Leigh” from henceforth. You never saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman with the neck of a vicious bull. . . . Still, I am surprised, I own, at the amount of success, and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about it, far more than if it all related to a book of his own. The form of the story, and also, something in the philosophy, seem to have caught the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . Give Peni’s and my love to the dearest ‘nonno’ (grandfather) whose sublime unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched feeling. (When he is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long life’s ungoverned will.) May God bless him! — . . . Robert has made his third bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are finished — it’s only matter of education. When the power of execution is achieved, he will try at something original. Then reading hurts him; as long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time — he can do it now better than at the beginning. The consequence of which is that an active occupation is salvation to him. . . . Nobody exactly understands him except me, who am in the inside of him and hear him breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloud with me and can’t stop himself. . . . I wanted his poems done this winter very much, and here was a bright room with three windows consecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and did nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours together — there has been little poetry done since last winter, when he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been happy. So I couldn’t be much in opposition against the sculpture — I couldn’t in fact at all. He has material for a volume, and will work at it this summer, he says.

  ‘His power is much in advance of “Strafford”, which is his poorest work of art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of the pen.

  ‘At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public — no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which I acknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, the other day, the American minister, whether “Robert was not an American.” The minister answered — ”is it possible that you ask me this? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States, where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were sorry he was not an American.” Very pretty of the American minister, was it not? — and literally true, besides. . . . Ah, dear Sarianna — I don’t complain for myself of an unappreciating public. I have no reason. But, just for that reason, I complain more about Robert — only he does not hear me complain — to you I may say, that the blindness, deafness and stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Of course Milsand had heard his name — well the contrary would have been strange. Robert is. All England can’t prevent his existence, I suppose. But nobody there, except a small knot of pre-Raffaellite men, pretend to do him justice. Mr. Forster has done the best, — in the press. As a sort of lion, Robert has his range in society — and — for the rest, you should see Chapman’s returns! — While, in America he is a power, a writer, a poet — he is read — he lives in the hearts of the people.

  ‘“Browning readings” here in Boston — ”Browning evenings” there. For the rest, the English hunt lions, too, Sarianna, but their lions are chiefly chosen among lords and railway kings. . . .’

  We cannot be surprised at Mrs. Browning’s desire for a more sustained literary activity on her husband’s part. We learn from his own subsequent correspondence that he too regarded the persevering exercise of his poetic faculty as almost a religious obligation. But it becomes the more apparent that the restlessness under which he was now labouring was its own excuse; and that its causes can have been no mystery even to those ‘outside’ him. The life and climate of Italy were beginning to undermine his strength. We owe it perhaps to the great and sorrowful change, which was then drawing near, that the full power of work returned to him.

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

  ‘The first time he honoured us was on an evening when the poet of the quarter of the “Monte” had announced his intention of coming to challenge a rival poet to a poetical contest. Such contests are, or were, common in Rome. In old times the Monte and the Trastevere, the two great quarters of the eternal city, held their meetings on the Ponte Rotto. The contests were not confined to the effusions of the poetical muse. Sometimes it was a strife between two lute-players, sometimes guitarists would engage, and sometimes mere wrestlers. The rivalry was so keen that the adverse parties finished up with a general fight. So the Papal Government had forbidden the meetings on the old bridge. But still each quarter had its pet champions, who were wont to meet in private before an appreciative, but less excitable audience, than in olden times.

  ‘Gigi (the host) had furnished a first-rate dinner, and his usual tap of excellent wine. (‘Vino del Popolo’ he called it.) The ‘Osteria’ had filled; the combatants were placed opposite each other on either side of a small table on which stood two ‘mezzi’ — long glass bottles holding about a quart apiece. For a moment the two poets eyed each other like two cocks seeking an opportunity to engage. Then through the crowd a stalwart carpenter, a constant attendant of Gigi’s, elbowed his way. He leaned over the table with a hand on each shoulder, and in a neatly turned couplet he then addressed the rival bards.

  ‘“You two,” he said, “for the honour of Rome, must do your best, for there is now listening to you a great Poet from England.”

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

  ‘It is not necessary to recount how the two Improvisato
ri poetized, even if I remembered, which I do not.

  ‘On another occasion, when Browning and Story were dining with us, we had a little orchestra (mandolins, two guitars, and a lute,) to play to us. The music consisted chiefly of well-known popular airs. While they were playing with great fervour the Hymn to Garibaldi — an air strictly forbidden by the Papal Government, three blows at the door resounded through the ‘Osteria’. The music stopped in a moment. I saw Gigi was very pale as he walked down the room. There was a short parley at the door. It opened, and a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes marched solemnly up to the counter from which drink was supplied. There was a dead silence while Gigi supplied them with large measures of wine, which the gendarmes leisurely imbibed. Then as solemnly they marched out again, with their heads well in the air, looking neither to the right nor the left. Most discreet if not incorruptible guardians of the peace! When the door was shut the music began again; but Gigi was so earnest in his protestations, that my friend Browning suggested we should get into carriages and drive to see the Coliseum by moonlight. And so we sallied forth, to the great relief of poor Gigi, to whom it meant, if reported, several months of imprisonment, and complete ruin.

  ‘In after-years Browning frequently recounted with delight this night march.

  ‘“We drove down the Corso in two carriages,” he would say. “In one were our musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people all asked, ‘who are these who make all this parade?’ At last some one said, ‘Without doubt these are the fellows who won the lottery,’ and everybody cried, ‘Of course these are the lucky men who have won.’“‘

  The two persons whom Mr. Browning saw most, and most intimately, during this and the ensuing winter, were probably Mr. and Mrs. Story. Allusion has already been made to the opening of the acquaintance at the Baths of Lucca in 1853, to its continuance in Rome in ‘53 and ‘54, and to the artistic pursuits which then brought the two men into close and frequent contact with each other. These friendly relations were cemented by their children, who were of about the same age; and after Mrs. Browning’s death, Miss Browning took her place in the pleasant intercourse which renewed itself whenever their respective visits to Italy and to England again brought the two families together. A no less lasting and truly affectionate intimacy was now also growing up with Mr. Cartwright and his wife — the Cartwrights (of Aynhoe) of whom mention was made in the Siena letter to F. Leighton; and this too was subsequently to include their daughter, now Mrs. Guy Le Strange, and Mr. Browning’s sister. I cannot quite ascertain when the poet first knew Mr. Odo Russell, and his mother, Lady William Russell, who was also during this, or at all events the following winter, in Rome; and whom afterwards in London he regularly visited until her death; but the acquaintance was already entering on the stage in which it would spread as a matter of course through every branch of the family. His first country visit, when he had returned to England, was paid with his son to Woburn Abbey.

  We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficulties of Mr. Browning’s biography: that of giving a sufficient idea of the growing extent and growing variety of his social relations. It is evident from the fragments of his wife’s correspondence that during, as well as after, his married life, he always and everywhere knew everyone whom it could interest him to know. These acquaintances constantly ripened into friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They were necessarily often marked by interesting circumstances or distinctive character. To follow them one by one, would add not chapters, but volumes, to our history. The time has not yet come at which this could even be undertaken; and any attempt at systematic selection would create a false impression of the whole. I must therefore be still content to touch upon such passages of Mr. Browning’s social experience as lie in the course of a comparatively brief record; leaving all such as are not directly included in it to speak indirectly for themselves.

  Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859:

  ‘Massimo d’Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noble head of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personal distinction you will guess at,* though I don’t pretend to have been insensible to that.’

  * An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company

  with the young Prince of Wales.

  Dr. — afterwards Cardinal — Manning was also among the distinguished or interesting persons whom they knew in Rome.

  Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or 1860, when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once more in contemplation.

  Casa Guidi.

  ‘My dearest Sarianna, — I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and see our dear Florence — the Queen of Italy, after all . . . A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was known to look — and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his beard . . . which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed — let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome, from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard . . . whiskers and all!! I cried when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable — for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered heart and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn’t let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) he yielded the point, — and the beard grew — but it grew white — which was the just punishment of the gods — our sins leave their traces.

  ‘Well, poor darling Robert won’t shock you after all — you can’t choose but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was not changed for the intermediate years. . . .’

  The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, and from thence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxiety concerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook,* then attacked by a fatal disease.

  * The name was afterwards changed to Altham.

  ‘. . . There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my precious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it is — be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful temperament, and I never could go on systematically making the worst of any case. I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectation of a letter, which is hard. I fight with it for Robert’s sake, but all the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. She is confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely. . . . In fact, I am living from day to day, on the merest crumbs of hope — on the daily bread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me a good deal, and interfered with the advantages of the summer, but that’s the least. Poor Robert’s scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out. . . .’

  This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected — the second postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment’s forgetfulness in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife’s desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion.

  Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his wife’s life, though it is also possible that her already lowered vita
lity increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her own casual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end. She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse, during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome.

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

  ‘. . . In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago. . . . I believe people in general would think the same exactly. As to the modelling — well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him on this point, for I don’t think him right; that is to say, it would not be right for me . . . But Robert waits for an inclination, works by fits and starts; he can’t do otherwise he says, and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble. I yearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present. . . . You will think Robert looking very well when you see him; indeed, you may judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used to forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, but all artists were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip does not harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, and the beard is pointed. . . . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful, I think, but then I think him all beautiful, and always. . . .’