Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Either this or the preceding summer brought Mr. Browning for the first time into personal contact with an early lover of his works: Mr. D. G. Rossetti. They had exchanged letters a year or two before, on the subject of ‘Pauline’, which Rossetti (as I have already mentioned) had read in ignorance of its origin, but with the conviction that only the author of ‘Paracelsus’ could have produced it. He wrote to Mr. Browning to ascertain the fact, and to tell him he had admired the poem so much as to transcribe it whole from the British Museum copy. He now called on him with Mr. William Allingham; and doubly recommended himself to the poet’s interest by telling him that he was a painter. When Mr. Browning was 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 Casa Guidi, where the routine of quiet days was resumed. Mrs. Browning has spoken in more than one of her letters of the comparative social seclusion in which she and her husband had elected to live. This seclusion was much modified in later years, and many well-known English and American names become associated with their daily life. It referred indeed almost entirely to their residence in Florence, where they found less 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 — an exception proving the rule; and we cannot therefore be surprised that he should subsequently have carried into the experience of an unshackled and very interesting social intercourse, a kind of freshness which a man of fifty has not generally preserved.

  The one excitement which presented itself in the early months of 1853 was the production of ‘Colombe’s Birthday’. The first allusion to this comes 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, have been in no danger of forgetting my promises any more than your performances — which were admirable of all kinds. I shall be delighted if you can do anything for “Colombe” — do what you think best with it, and for me — it will be pleasant to be in such hands — only, pray follow the corrections in the last edition — (Chapman and Hall will give you a copy) — as they are important to the sense. As for the condensation into three acts — I shall leave that, and all cuttings and the like, to your own 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 wife see you too — she who “never saw a great actress” she says — unless it was Dejazet! . . .’

  Mrs. Browning writes about the performance, April 12:

  ‘. . . I am beginning to be anxious about ‘Colombe’s Birthday’. I care much more about it than Robert does. He says that no one will mistake it for his speculation; it’s Mr. Buckstone’s affair altogether. True — but I should like it to succeed, being Robert’s play, notwithstanding. But the play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous about it. On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know, — and what in the world made them select it, if it is not likely to answer their purpose? 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 line of communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his new edition, and that was the whole. . . .’

  She communicates the result in May:

  ‘. . . Yes, Robert’s play succeeded, but there could be no “run” for a play of that kind. It was a “succes d’estime” and something more, which is surprising perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice. . . .’

  Mrs. Browning did see ‘Miss Faucit’ on her next visit to England. She agreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone, one morning, at her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half. The only person who had ‘done justice’ to ‘Colombe’ besides contributing to whatever success her husband’s earlier plays had obtained, was much more than ‘a great actress’ to Mrs. Browning’s mind; and we may imagine it would have gone hard with her before she renounced the pleasure of making 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 introducing us, for the first time, to Mr. and Mrs. William Story, between whose family and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was ever afterwards to subsist.

  July 15.

  ‘. . . We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a little holy fear of the company there — but the scenery, and the coolness, and convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago just after the birth of our child. The mountains are wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work.

  ‘Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with it the idea of home. . . .’

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

  ‘. . . We are enjoying the mountains here — riding the donkeys in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful. The strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer, through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, and for himself, sculptor and poet — and she a sympathetic graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one another’s houses.

  ‘. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down various precipices — but the scenery was exquisite — past speaking of for beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts 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 which he walked or rode. A fortnight’s visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton, was also an incident of this summer.

  The next three letters from which I am able to quote, describe the impressions 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 — our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way — that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually — for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys — how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, — and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant with a message, “the boy was in convulsions — there was danger.” We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied — never opened his ey
es in consciousness — and by eight in the evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house — could not be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever, with a tendency to the brain — and within two days her life was almost despaired of — exactly the same malady as her brother’s. . . . Also the English 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 the three patients recovered — only in poor little Edith’s case Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting. . . . Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is 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 the carriage together — I am horribly weak about such things — I can’t look on the earth-side of death — I flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look over death, and upwards, or I can’t look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother sat so calmly — not to drop from the seat. Well — all this has blackened Rome to me. I can’t think about the Caesars in the old strain of thought — the antique words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoilt to me — there’s the truth. Still, one lives through one’s associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things — the climate, for instance, which, though pernicious to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue sky 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 do work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris’s (A. K.) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble 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 out of 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 hair and radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic, unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought and convention — but noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. She thinks me credulous and full of dreams — but does not despise me for that reason — which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for I should not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous — her milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy family relations, which poor Fanny Kemble’s has not had. Mrs. Sartoris’ house has the best society in Rome — and exquisite music of course. We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him — more than I do — because of the access of cold weather lately which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside, on a day’s excursion with him and the Sartorises — and I hear found favour in his sight. Said the critic, “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 me laugh and think of you directly. . . . Robert has been sitting for his picture to Mr. Fisher, the English artist who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor. You remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon’s house in London. Well, he has painted Robert’s, and it is an admirable likeness. The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic. . . .’

  May 19.

  ‘. . . To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don’t pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. It’s a palimpsest Rome, a watering-place written over the antique, and I haven’t taken to it as a poet should I suppose. And let us speak the truth above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the place have not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child, the light of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him. . . . The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the two sisters, 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; for instance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, who is witty and agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, who is an agreeable man, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise and champagne. . . .’

  It must have been on one of the excursions here described that an incident took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristic comments in a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnic party had strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was not strong enough to join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, stayed with her; which act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble to exclaim that he was the only man she had ever known who behaved like a Christian to his wife. She was, when he wrote this letter, reading his works for the first time, and had expressed admiration for them; but, he continued, none of the kind things she said to him on that subject could move him as did those words in the Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would have modified her statement in later years, for the sake of one English and one American husband now closely related to her. Even then, perhaps, she did not make it without inward reserve. But she will forgive me, I am sure, for having repeated it.

  Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, and says: ‘I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener than is set down, but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked her extremely.’

  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 go northward. I love Florence — the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the nightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to live in — cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limits of civilization yet out of the crush of it. . . . We have spent two delicious evenings at villas outside the gates, one with young Lytton, 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 of her time with us . . . singing passionately and talking eloquently. She is really charming. . . .’

  I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of the winter of 1854-5. In all probability Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in, or as near as possible to, Florence, since their income was still too limited for continuous travelling. They possibly talked of going to England, but postponed it till the following year; we know that they went there in 1855, taking his sister with them as they passed through Paris. They did not this time take lodgings for the summer months, but hired a house at 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square; and there, on September 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 well known; the unconscious sitter must also, by this time, be acquainted with it; but Miss Browning thinks no one except herself, who was near Rossetti at the table, was at the moment aware of its being made. All eyes must have been turned towards Tennyson, seated by his hostess on the sofa. Miss Arabel Barrett was also of the party.

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

  ‘We went to Denmark Hill yesterday to have luncheon with them, and see the Turners, which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest, — refined and truthful. I like him very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances made this year in England.’

  Chapter 12

  1855-1858

  ‘Men and Women’ — ’Karshook’ — ’Two in the Campagna’ — Winter in Paris; Lady Elgin — ’Aurora Leigh’ — Death of Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett — Penini — Mrs. Browning’s Letters to Miss Browning — The Florentine Carnival — Baths of Lucca — Spiritualism — Mr. Kirkup; Count Ginnasi — Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox — Havre.

  The beautiful ‘One Word More’ was dated from London in September; and the 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’s readers, in their first arrangement and appearance, as in later redistributions and reprints; but one curious little fact concerning them is perhaps not generally known. In the eighth line of the fourteenth 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 have been, as it so easily might be, in existence, before the author decided to 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 of 1889.