Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  . . . . .

  ‘My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found: “Vouz savez la croix au sommet de la colline? A cette distance de cela!” That is precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me.’

  A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3 clearly refers to some comment of Mrs. Fitz-Gerald’s on the peculiar nature of this presentiment:

  ‘No — I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of ideas — contraries come into the mind as often as similarities — and the peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jar with them. I have often thought of the trouble that might have befallen me if poor Miss Smith’s death had happened the night before, when we were on the mountain alone together — or next morning when we were on the proposed 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 turning to much account — for we cannot walk till sunset. I had two hours’ walk, or nearly, before breakfast, however: It is the loveliest country I ever had experience of, and we shall prolong our stay perhaps — apart from the concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be glad to apprehend no long journey — besides the annoyance of having to pass Florence and Rome unvisited, for S.’s sake, I mean: even Naples would have been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability.

  ‘Your “Academy” came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electric eel, as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about the Archbishop who has always been strangely kind to me.’

  He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of October with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the party assembled there was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley’s guests, a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of a dangerous mountain without a guide, and who lost her life in the experiment.

  A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show that even in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning’s patriotism did not go to sleep. There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendship did not; but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that they should be largely absorbed by politics, though he followed the course of his country’s history as a necessary part of his own life. It needed a crisis like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irish struggle, to arouse him to a full emotional participation in current events. 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 tell them we shall expect to see them at Venice, — which was not so likely to be the case when we were bound for Ischia. As for Lady Wolseley — one dares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now; but my own pulses beat pretty strongly when I open the day’s newspaper — which, by some new arrangement, 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?] of the Black Watch; he was ordered to Edinburgh, and the regiment not dispatched, after all, — it having just returned from India; the poor fellow wrote in his despair “to know if I could do anything!” He may be wanted yet: though nothing seems wanted in Egypt, so capital appears to be the management.’

  In 1879 Mr. Browning published the first series of his ‘Dramatic Idyls’; and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration through the public mind. In ‘La Saisiaz’ and the accompanying poems he had accomplished what was virtually a life’s work. For he was approaching the appointed limit of man’s existence; and the poetic, which had been nourished in him by the natural life — which had once outstripped its developments, but on the whole remained subject to them — had therefore, also, passed through the successive phases of individual growth. He had been inspired as dramatic poet by the one avowed conviction that little else is worth study but the history of a soul; and outward act or circumstance had only entered into his creations as condition or incident of the given psychological state. His dramatic imagination had first, however unconsciously, sought its materials in himself; then gradually been projected into the world of men and women, which his widening knowledge laid open to him; it is scarcely necessary to say that its power was only fully revealed when it left the remote regions of poetical and metaphysical self-consciousness, to invoke the not less mysterious and far more searching utterance of the general human heart. It was a matter of course that in this expression of his dramatic genius, the intellectual and emotional should exhibit the varying relations which are developed by the natural life: that feeling should begin by doing the work of thought, as in ‘Saul’, and thought end by doing the work of feeling, as in ‘Fifine at the Fair’; and that the two should alternate or combine in proportioned intensity in such works of an intermediate period as ‘Cleon’, ‘A Death in the Desert’, the ‘Epistle of 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 sometimes falsify calculations based on the normal life. The long-continued force and freshness of Mr. Browning’s general faculties was in itself a protest against them. We saw without surprise that during the decade which produced ‘Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau’, ‘Fifine at the Fair’, and ‘Red Cotton Nightcap Country’, he could give us ‘The Inn Album’, with its expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, rarely equalled, in the whole range of his work: or those two unique creations of airy fancy and passionate symbolic romance, ‘Saint Martin’s Summer’, and ‘Numpholeptos’. It was no ground for astonishment that the creative power in him should even ignore the usual period of decline, and defy, so far as is humanly possible, its natural laws of modification. But in the ‘Dramatic Idyls’ he did more than proceed with unflagging powers on a long-trodden, distinctive course; he took a new departure.

  Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined and worked out his new group of poems; he presented it in a no less subtle and complex form. But he gave it the added force of picturesque realization; and this by means of incidents both powerful in themselves, and especially suited for its development. It was only in proportion to this higher suggestiveness that a startling situation ever seemed to him fit subject for poetry. Where its interest and excitement exhausted themselves in the external facts, it became, he thought, the property of the chronicler, but supplied no material for the poet; and he often declined matter which had been offered him for dramatic treatment because 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 dimly striving to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this that the psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such at least is the case in ‘Martin Relph’, and the idealized Russian legend, ‘Ivan Ivanovitch’. The grotesque tragedy of ‘Ned Bratts’ has also its marked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader kind.

  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 it something of the renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change. The lyrics which alternate with its parables include some of the most tender, most impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems.

  The moral and religious opinions conveyed in this later volume may be accepted without reserve as Mr. Browning’s own, if we subtract from them the exaggerations of the figurative and dramatic form. It is indeed easy to recognize in them the under currents of his whole real an
d imaginative life. They have also on one or two points an intrinsic value which will justify a later allusion.

  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 Professor Knight — Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni — The Goldoni Sonnet — Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni — Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow — Mrs. Bloomfield Moore — Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin — Loss of old Friends — Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy — ’Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day’.

  This Indian summer of Mr. Browning’s genius coincided with the highest manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, any living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society bearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. The idea arose almost simultaneously in the mind of Dr., then Mr. Furnivall, and of Miss E. H. Hickey. One day, in the July of 1881, as they were on their way to Warwick Crescent to pay an appointed visit there, Miss Hickey strongly expressed her opinion of the power and breadth of Mr. Browning’s work; and concluded by saying that much as she loved Shakespeare, she found in certain aspects of Browning what even Shakespeare could not give her. Mr. Furnivall replied to this by asking what she would say to helping him to found a Browning Society; and it then appeared that Miss Hickey had recently written to him a letter, suggesting that he should found one; but that it had miscarried, or, as she was disposed to think, not been posted. Being thus, at all events, agreed as to the fitness of the undertaking, they immediately spoke of it to Mr. Browning, who at first treated the project as a joke; but did not oppose it when once he understood it to be serious. His only proviso was that he should remain neutral in respect to its fulfilment. He refused even to give Mr. Furnivall the name or address of any friends, whose interest in himself or his work might render their co-operation probable.

  This passive assent sufficed. A printed prospectus was now issued. About two hundred members were soon secured. A committee was elected, of which Mr. J. T. Nettleship, already well known as a Browning student, was one of the most conspicuous members; and by the end of October a small Society had come into existence, which held its inaugural meeting in the Botanic Theatre of University College. Mr. Furnivall, its principal founder, and responsible organizer, was Chairman of the Committee, and Miss E. H. Hickey, the co-founder, was Honorary Secretary. When, two or three 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 this Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation of a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a precedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his work, or, as some one termed it, for making a man a classic during his lifetime. But this fact was not yet generally known; and meanwhile a curious contradiction developed itself in the public mind. The outer world of Mr. Browning’s acquaintance continued to condemn the too great honour which was being done to him; from those of the inner circle he constantly received condolences on being made the subject of proceedings which, according to them, he must somehow regard as an offence.

  This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. At the beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions of the Society. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings as to its future. He could not be sure that its action would always be judicious, still less that it would be always successful. He was prepared for its being laughed at, and for himself being included in the laughter. He consented to its establishment for what seemed to him the one unanswerable reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, no just cause for forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn between the kind of publicity which every writer seeks, which, for good or evil, he had already obtained, and that which the Browning Society was conferring on him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed, and discussed ‘viva voce’ and in print. That these proceedings would now take place in other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, through other organs than newspapers or magazines, by other and larger groups of persons than those usually gathered round a dinner-or a tea-table, involved no real change in the situation. In any case, he had made himself public property; and those who thus organized their study of him were exercising an individual right. If his own rights had been assailed he would have guarded them also; but the circumstances of the case precluded such a contingency. And he had his reward. How he felt towards the Society at the close of its first session is better indicated in the following letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald than in the note to Mr. Yates which Mr. Sharp has published, and which was written with more reserve and, I believe, at a rather earlier date. Even the shade of condescension which lingers about his words will have been effaced by subsequent experience; and many letters written to Dr. Furnivall must, since then, have attested his grateful and affectionate appreciation of kindness intended and service done to him.

  . . . They always treat me gently in ‘Punch’ — why don’t you do the same by the Browning Society? I see you emphasize Miss Hickey’s acknowledgement of defects in time and want of rehearsal: but I look for no great perfection in a number of kindly disposed strangers to me personally, who try to interest people in my poems by singing and reading them. They give their time for nothing, offer their little entertainment for nothing, and certainly get next to nothing in the way of thanks — unless from myself who feel grateful to the faces I shall never see, the voices I shall never hear. The kindest notices I have had, or at all events those that have given me most pleasure, have been educed by this Society — A. Sidgwick’s paper, that of Professor Corson, Miss Lewis’ article in this month’s ‘Macmillan’ — and I feel grateful for it all, for my part, — and none the less for a little amusement at the wonder of some of my friends that I do not jump up and denounce the practices which must annoy me so much. Oh! my ‘gentle Shakespeare’, how well you felt and said — ’never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.’ So, dear Lady, here is my duty and simplicity tendering itself 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 the little Society to be three-fourths recruited among persons, many living at a distance, whom the poet did not know, became also in its way a satisfaction. It was with him a matter of course, though never of indifference, that his closer friends of both sexes were among its members; it was one of real gratification that they included from the beginning such men as Dean Boyle of Salisbury, the Rev. Llewellyn Davies, George Meredith, and James Cotter Morison — that they enjoyed the sympathy and co-operation of such a one as Archdeacon Farrar. But he had an ingenuous pride in reading the large remainder of the Society’s lists of names, and pointing out the fact that there was not one among them which he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, ‘All these people care for me as a poet. No social interest, no personal prepossession, has attracted them to my work.’ And when the unknown name was not only appended to a list; when it formed the signature of a paper — excellent or indifferent as might be — but in either case bearing witness to a careful and unobtrusive study of his poems, by so much was the gratification increased. He seldom weighed the intrinsic merit of such productions; he did not read them critically. No man was ever more adverse to the seeming ungraciousness of analyzing the quality of a gift. In real life indeed this power of gratitude sometimes defeated its own end, by neutralizing his insight into the motive or effort involved in different acts of kindness, and placing them all successively on the same plane.

  In the present case, however, an ungraduated acceptance of the labour bestowed on him was part of t
he neutral attitude which it was his constant endeavour to maintain. He always refrained from noticing any erroneous statement concerning himself or his works which might appear in the Papers of the Society: since, as he alleged, if he once began to correct, he would appear to endorse whatever he left uncorrected, and thus make himself responsible, not only for any interpretation that might be placed on his poems, but, what was far more serious, for every eulogium that was bestowed upon them. He could not stand aloof as entirely as he or even his friends desired, since it was usual with some members of the Society to seek from him elucidations of obscure passages which, without these, it was declared, would be a stumbling-block to future readers. But he disliked being even to this extent drawn into its operation; and his help was, I believe, less and less frequently invoked. Nothing could be more false than the rumour which once arose that he superintended those performances of his plays which took place under the direction of the Society. Once only, and by the urgent desire of 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 by a pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning’s work should often ignore its authorized explanations, and should read and discuss it in the light of personal impressions more congenial to their own mind; and the various and circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem did not serve to render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry lies so largely in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions of it have their positive value and also their relative truth; and the intellectual friction which was thus created, not only in the parent society, but in its offshoots in England and America, was not their least important result.