Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  In this beautiful old city, so full of repose as it lies “asleep in the sun,”

  Mrs. Browning’s health almost leapt, so swift was her advance towards vigour.

  “She is getting better every day,” wrote her husband,

  “stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes.”

  That happy first winter they passed “in the most secluded manner, reading Vasari, and dreaming dreams of seeing Venice in the summer.” But early in April, when the swallows had flown inland above the pines of Viareggio, and Shelley’s favourite little Aziola was hooting silverly among the hollow vales of Carrara, the two poets prepared to leave what the frailer of them called “this perch of Pisa.”

  But with all its charm and happy associations, the little city was dull. “Even human faces divine are quite `rococo’ with me,” Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend. The change to Florence was a welcome one to both. Browning had already been there, but to his wife it was as the fulfilment of a dream. They did not at first go to that romantic old palace which will be for ever sociate with the author of “Casa Guidi Windows”, but found accommodation in a more central locality.

  When the June heats came, husband and wife both declared for Ancona, the picturesque little town which dreams out upon the Adriatic. But though so close to the sea, Ancona is in summer time almost insufferably hot. Instead of finding it cooler than Florence, it was as though they had leapt right into a cauldron. Alluding to it months later, Mrs. Browning wrote to Horne, “The heat was just the fiercest fire of your imagination, and I SEETHE to think of it at this distance.”

  It was a memorable journey all the same. They went to Ravenna, and at four o’clock one morning stood by Dante’s tomb, moved deeply by the pathetic inscription and by all the associations it evoked. All along the coast from Ravenna to Loretto was new ground to both, and endlessly fascinating; in the passing and repassing of the Apennines they had `wonderful visions of beauty and glory.’ At Ancona itself, notwithstanding the heat, they spent a happy season. Here Browning wrote one of the loveliest of his short poems, “The Guardian Angel”, which had its origin in Guercino’s picture in the chapel at Fano. By the allusions in the sixth and eighth stanzas it is clear that the poem was inscribed to Alfred Domett, the poet’s well-loved friend immortalised as “Waring”. Doubtless it was written for no other reason than the urgency of song, for in it are the loving allusions to his wife, “MY angel with me too,” and “my love is here.” Three times they went to the chapel, he tells us in the seventh stanza, to drink in to their souls’ content the beauty of “dear Guercino’s” picture. Browning has rarely uttered the purely personal note of his inner life. It is this that affords a peculiar value to “The Guardian Angel”, over and above its technical beauty. In the concluding lines of the stanzas I am about to quote he gives the supreme expression to what was his deepest faith, his profoundest song-motive.

  ”I would not look up thither past thy head

  Because the door opes, like that child, I know,

  For I should have thy gracious face instead,

  Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low

  Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,

  And lift them up to pray, and gently tether

  Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment’s spread?

  . . . . .

  ”How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!

  I think how I should view the earth and skies

  And sea, when once again my brow was bared

  After thy healing, with such different eyes.

  O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:

  And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.

  What further may be sought for or declared?”

  After the Adriatic coast was left, they hesitated as to returning to Florence, the doctors having laid such stress on the climatic suitability of Pisa for Mrs. Browning. But she felt so sure of herself in her new strength that it was decided to adventure upon at least one winter in the queen-city. They were fortunate in obtaining a residence in the old palace called Casa Guidi, in the Via Maggiore, over against the church of San Felice, and here, with a few brief intervals, they lived till death separated them.

  On the little terrace outside there was more noble verse fashioned in the artist’s creative silence than we can ever be aware of: but what a sacred place it must ever be for the lover of poetry! There, one ominous sultry eve, Browning, brooding over the story of a bygone Roman crime, foreshadowed “The Ring and the Book”, and there, in the many years he dwelt in Casa Guidi, he wrote some of his finer shorter poems. There, also, “Aurora Leigh” was born, and many a lyric fresh with the dew of genius. Who has not looked at the old sunworn house and failed to think of that night when each square window of San Felice was aglow with festival lights, and when the summer lightnings fell silently in broad flame from cloud to cloud: or has failed to hear, down the narrow street, a little child go singing, ‘neath Casa Guidi windows by the church, `O bella liberta, O bella!’

  Better even than these, for happy dwelling upon, is the poem the two poets lived. Morning and day were full of work, study, or that pleasurable idleness which for the artist is so often his best inspiration. Here, on the little terrace, they used to sit together, or walk slowly to and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent than silence. Here one day they received a letter from Horne. There is nothing of particular note in Mrs. Browning’s reply, and yet there are not a few of her poems we would miss rather than these chance words — delicate outlines left for the reader to fill in: “We were reading your letter, together, on our little terrace — walking up and down reading it — I mean the letter to Robert — and then, at the end, suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the stones, just between the balustrades, and already fluttering in a breath of wind and about to fly away over San Felice’s church, we caught a glimpse of the feather of a note to E. B. B. How near we were to the loss of it, to be sure!”

  Happier still must have been the quiet evenings in late spring and summer, when, the one shrouded against possible chills, the other bare-headed and with loosened coat, walked slowly to and fro in the dark, conscious of “a busy human sense” below, but solitary on their balcony beyond the lamplit room.

  ”While in and out the terrace-plants, and round

  One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned

  The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower.”

  An American friend has put on record his impressions of the two poets, and their home at this time. He had been called upon by Browning, and by him invited to take tea at Casa Guidi the same evening. There the visitor saw, “seated at the tea-table of the great room of the palace in which they were living, a very small, very slight woman, with very long curls drooping forward, almost across the eyes, hanging to the bosom, and quite concealing the pale, small face, from which the piercing inquiring eyes looked out sensitively at the stranger. Rising from her chair, she put out cordially the thin white hand of an invalid, and in a few moments they were pleasantly chatting, while the husband strode up and down the room, joining in the conversation with a vigour, humour, eagerness, and affluence of curious lore which, with his trenchant thought and subtle sympathy, make him one of the most charming and inspiring of companions.”

  In the autumn the same friend, joined by one or two other acquaintances, went with the Brownings to Vallombrosa for a couple of days, greatly to Mrs. Browning’s delight, for whom the name had had a peculiar fascination ever since she had first encountered it in Milton.

  She was conveyed up the steep way towards the monastery in a great basket, without wheels, drawn by two oxen: though, as she tells Miss Mitford, she did not get into the monastery after all, she and her maid being turned away by the monks “for the sin of womanhood.” She was too much of an invalid to climb the steeper heights, but loved to lie under the great chestnuts upon the hill-slopes near the convent. At twilight they went to the little convent-chapel, and there Browning sat down
at the organ and played some of those older melodies he loved so well.

  It is, strangely enough, from Americans that we have the best account

  of the Brownings in their life at Casa Guidi: from R. H. Stoddart,

  Bayard Taylor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Stillman Hillard, and W. W. Story.

  I can find room, however, for but one excerpt: —

  == “Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, could hardly enter the loved rooms now, and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favoured, can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour — the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning — the long room filled with plaster-casts and studies, which was Mrs. Browning’s retreat — and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room where SHE always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the iron-grey church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreary look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr. Browning were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante’s grave profile, a cast of Keats’s face and brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning’s good friend and relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewn with writing materials, books, and newspapers, was always by her side. . . . After her death, her husband had a careful water-colour drawing made of this room, which has been engraved more than once. It still hangs in his drawing-room, where the mirror and one of the quaint chairs above named still are. The low arm-chair and small table are in Browning’s study — with his father’s desk, on which he has written all his poems.” — W. W. Story. ==

  To Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hillard, and Mr. Story, in particular, we are indebted for several delightful glimpses into the home-life of the two poets. We can see Mrs. Browning in her “ideal chamber”, neither a library nor a sitting-room, but a happy blending of both, with the numerous old paintings in antique Florentine frames, easy-chairs and lounges, carved bookcases crammed with books in many languages, bric-a-brac in any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere, and herself the frailest flower of all.

  Mr. Hillard speaks of the happiness of the Brownings’ home and their union as perfect: he, full of manly power, she, the type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. This much-esteemed friend was fascinated by Mrs. Browning. Again and again he alludes to her exceeding spirituality: “She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl:” her frame “the transparent veil for a celestial and mortal spirit:” and those fine words which prove that he too was of the brotherhood of the poets, “Her tremulous voice often flutters over her words like the flame of a dying candle over the wick.”

  Chapter 8.

  With the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a new happiness to the two poets: the son who was born on the 9th of March. The boy was called Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, in remembrance of Browning’s much-loved mother, having been substituted for the “Sarianna” wherewith the child, if a girl, was to have been christened. Thereafter their “own young Florentine” was an endless joy and pride to both: and he was doubly loved by his father for his having brought a renewal of life to her who bore him.

  That autumn they went to the country, to the neighbourhood of Vallombrosa, and then to the Bagni di Lucca. There they wandered content in chestnut-forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage.

  Early in the year Browning’s “Poetical Works” were published in two volumes.

  Some of the most beautiful of his shorter poems are to be found therein.

  What a new note is struck throughout, what range of subject there is!

  Among them all, are there any more treasurable than two of the simplest,

  “Home Thoughts from Abroad” and “Night and Morning”?

  ”Oh, to be in England

  Now that April’s there,

  And whoever wakes in England

  Sees, some morning, unaware,

  That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

  Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

  While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

  In England — now!

  And after April, when May follows,

  And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

  Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

  Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

  Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray’s edge —

  That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

  Lest you should think he never could recapture

  The first fine careless rapture!”

  A more significant note is struck in “Meeting at Night” and “Parting at Morning”.

  Meeting.

  I.

  The grey sea and the long black land;

  And the yellow half-moon large and low;

  And the startled little waves that leap

  In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

  As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

  And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

  II.

  Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

  Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

  A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

  And blue spurt of a lighted match,

  And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,

  Than the two hearts beating each to each!

  Parting.

  Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

  And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:

  And straight was a path of gold for him,

  And the need of a world of men for me.

  The following winter, when they were again at their Florentine home, Browning wrote his “Christmas Eve and Easter Day”, that remarkable `apologia’ for Christianity, and close-reasoned presentation of the religious thought of the time. It is, however, for this reason that it is so widely known and admired: for it is ever easier to attract readers by dogma than by beauty, by intellectual argument than by the seduction of art. Coincidently, Mrs. Browning wrote the first portion of “Casa Guidi Windows”.

  In the spring of 1850 husband and wife spent a short stay in Rome. I have been told that the poem entitled `Two in the Campagna’ was as actually personal as the already quoted “Guardian Angel”. But I do not think stress should be laid on this and kindred localisations. Exact or not, they have no literary value. To the poet, the dramatic poet above all, locality and actuality of experience are, so to say, merely fortunate coigns of outlook, for the winged genius to temporally inhabit. To the imaginative mind, truth is not simply actuality. As for `Two in the Campagna’: it is too universally true to be merely personal. There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognise most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits. If this were demonstratable, immortality would be a palpable fiction. The moment individuality can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, the wind has fallen, the dream has been dreamed. So long as the soul remains inviolate amid all shock of time and change, so long is it immortal. No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved,
and fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment. The poem tells us how the lovers, straying hand in hand one May day across the Campagna, sat down among the seeding grasses, content at first in the idle watching of a spider spinning her gossamer threads from yellowing fennel to other vagrant weeds. All around them

  ”The champaign with its endless fleece

  Of feathery grasses everywhere!

  Silence and passion, joy and peace,

  An everlasting wash of air — . . .

  ”Such life here, through such length of hours,

  Such miracles performed in play,

  Such primal naked forms of flowers,

  Such letting nature have her way.” . . .

  Let us too be unashamed of soul, the poet-lover says, even as earth lies bare to heaven. Nothing is to be overlooked. But all in vain: in vain “I drink my fill at your soul’s springs.”

  ”Just when I seemed about to learn!

  Where is the thread now? off again!

  The old trick! Only I discern —

  Infinite passion, and the pain

  Of finite hearts that yearn.”

  It was during this visit to Rome that both were gratified by the proposal in the leading English literary weekly, that the Poet-Laureateship, vacant by the death of Wordsworth, should be conferred upon Mrs. Browning: though both rejoiced when they learned that the honour had devolved upon one whom each so ardently admired as Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid to England, not one very much looked forward to by Mrs. Browning, who had never had cause to yearn for her old home in Wimpole Street, and who could anticipate no reconciliation with her father, who had persistently refused even to open her letters to him, and had forbidden the mention of her name in his home circle.

  Bayard Taylor, in his travel-sketches published under the title “At Home and Abroad”, has put on record how he called upon the Brownings one afternoon in September, at their rooms in Devonshire Street, and found them on the eve of their return to Italy.