Mr. Browning’s old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December. She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with her brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in her sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, and all that ‘conquers death’. He little knew how soon he would need the same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife’s poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said, as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers, he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some years afterwards to another friend: ‘You are wrong — quite wrong — she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can’t you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something — he wants to make you see it as he sees it — shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off a little star — that’s the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.’
* Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New
Castle.
Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after their return to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection to which she was subject; and a new doctor who was called in discovered grave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed to be existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively, indeed actually, slight; and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning, dated June 7, confirms what her family and friends have since asserted, that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow.
‘. . . We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or hand to name ‘Cavour’. That great soul which meditated and made Italy has gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a man!’
Her death was signalized by the appearance — this time, I am told, unexpected — of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earth as to come into contact with it.
Chapter 14
1861-1863
Miss Blagden — Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton — His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies — Establishment in London — Plan of Life — Letter to Madame du Quaire — Miss Arabel Barrett — Biarritz — Letters to Miss Blagden — Conception of ‘The Ring and the Book’ — Biographical Indiscretion — New Edition of his Works — Mr. and Mrs. Procter.
The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning in this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden — Isa Blagden, as she was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her could hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet’s life; but the friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning brings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. She was for many years a centre of English society in Florence; for her genial, hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes (she wrote one or two novels, I believe not without merit), secured her the acquaintance of many interesting persons, some of whom occasionally made her house their home; and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo live pleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation who were permitted to share in them.
She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, and induced his father to spend his nights under her roof, while the last painful duties detained him in Florence. He at least gave her cause to deny, what has been so often affirmed, that great griefs are necessarily silent. She always spoke of this period as her ‘apocalyptic month’, so deeply poetic were the ravings which alternated with the simple human cry of the desolate heart: ‘I want her, I want her!’ But the ear which received these utterances has long been closed in death. The only written outbursts of Mr. Browning’s frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, to his sister, and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent loss most naturally invoked them, and who has since thought best, so far as rested with her, to destroy the letters in which they were contained. It is enough to know by simple statement that he then suffered as he did. Life conquers Death for most of us; whether or not ‘nature, art, and beauty’ assist in the conquest. It was bound to conquer in Mr. Browning’s case: first through his many-sided vitality; and secondly, through the special motive for living and striving which remained to him in his son. This note is struck in two letters which are given me to publish, written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning’s death; and we see also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow, and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace and painlessness of his wife’s last moments could afford to him.
Florence: July 19, ‘61.
Dear Leighton, — It is like your old kindness to write to me and to say what you do — I know you feel for me. I can’t write about it — but there were many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day — there seemed no pain, and (what she would have felt most) the knowledge of separation from us was spared her. I find these things a comfort indeed.
I shall go away from Italy for many a year — to Paris, then London for a day or two just to talk with her sister — but if I can see you it will be a great satisfaction. Don’t fancy I am ‘prostrated’, I have enough to do for the boy and myself in carrying out her wishes. He is better than one would have thought, and behaves dearly to me. Everybody has been very kind.
Tell dear Mrs. Sartoris that I know her heart and thank her with all mine. After my day or two at London I shall go to some quiet place in France to get right again and then stay some time at Paris in order to find out leisurely what it will be best to do for Peni — but eventually I shall go to England, I suppose. I don’t mean to live with anybody, even my own family, but to occupy myself thoroughly, seeing dear friends, however, like you. God bless you. Yours ever affectionately, Robert Browning.
The second is addressed to Miss Haworth.
Florence: July 20, 1861.
My dear Friend, — I well know you feel as you say, for her once and for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you something perhaps — and one day I shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of cold and cough she was subject to — had no presentiment of the result whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was ‘better’, ‘quite comfortable — if I would but come to bed,’ to within a few minutes of the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week’s illness — but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying fear — she said on the last evening ‘it is merely the old attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago — there is no doubt I shall soon recover,’ and we talked over plans for the summer, and next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed — so little reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept heavily, and brokenly — that was the bad sign — but then she would sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. At four o’clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid and sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, ‘Well, you are determined to make an exaggerated case of it!’ Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer — the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s — and in a few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to him
self as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by her earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have been aware of our parting’s approach — but she was quite conscious, had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in the next room. Her last word was when I asked ‘How do you feel?’ — ’Beautiful.’ You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to attend to at once — her child to care for, educate, establish properly; and my own life to fulfil as properly, — all just as she would require were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years — go to London for a few days’ talk with Arabel — then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni — but no more ‘housekeeping’ for me, even with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope — but my root is taken and remains.
I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did.
She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well — very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can’t know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine — he will want what he never had — that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety — I have had everything and shall not forget.
God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa goes with me — dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day or two before the end — she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you, — Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151, rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, Robert Browning.
The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, I believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning’s attitude towards men. His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. At about the end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied by Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself must soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on the subject of his wife’s provisional disinterment,* in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot.
* Required for the subsequent placing of the monument
designed by F. Leighton.
Sept. ‘61.
‘. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded with, — will you do — all you can — suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure — I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come — a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, or gratification of strangers’ curiosity, far better that I had left the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won’t think any more of it — now — at least. . . .’
The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects itself with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, which was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning’s nature. He shrank, as his wife had done, from the ‘earth side’ of the portentous change; but truth compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part in his attitude towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed, held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been. He had no sympathy for the still human tenderness with which so many of us regard the mortal remains of those they have loved, or with the solemn or friendly interest in which that tenderness so often reflects itself in more neutral minds. He would claim all respect for the corpse, but he would turn away from it. Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, in reference to his wife’s monument, with which Mr. Barrett had professed himself pleased. His tone is characterized by an almost religious reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines. He nevertheless writes:
‘I hope to see it one day — and, although I have no kind of concern as to where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown, yet, if my fortune be such, and my survivors be not unduly troubled, I should like them to lie in the place I have retained there. It is no matter, however.’
The letter is dated October 19, 1866. He never saw Florence again.
Mr. Browning spent two months with his father and sister at St.-Enogat, near Dinard, from which place the letter to Miss Blagden was written; and then proceeded to London, where his wife’s sister, Miss Arabel Barrett, was living. He had declared in his first grief that he would never keep house again, and he began his solitary life in lodgings which at his request she had engaged for him; but the discomfort of this arrangement soon wearied him of it; and before many months had passed, he had sent to Florence for his furniture, and settled himself in the house in Warwick Crescent, which possessed, besides other advantages, that of being close to Delamere Terrace, where Miss Barrett had taken up her abode.
This first period of Mr. Browning’s widowed life was one of unutterable dreariness, in which the smallest and yet most unconquerable element was the prosaic ugliness of everything which surrounded him. It was fifteen years since he had spent a winter in England; he had never spent one in London. There had been nothing to break for him the transition from the stately beauty of Florence to the impressions and associations of the Harrow and Edgware Roads, and of Paddington Green. He might have escaped this neighbourhood by way of Westbourne Terrace; but his walks constantly led him in an easterly direction; and whether in an unconscious hugging of his chains, or, as was more probable, from the desire to save time, he would drag his aching heart and reluctant body through the sordidness or the squalor of this short cut, rather than seek the pleasanter thoroughfares which were open to him. Even the prettiness of Warwick Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphere of low or ugly life which encompassed it on almost every side. His haunting dream was one day to have done with it all; to have fulfilled his mission with his son, educated him, launched him in a suitable career, and to go back to sunshine and beauty again. He learned by degrees to regard London as a home; as the only fitting centre for the varied energies which were reviving in him; to feel pride and pleasure in its increasingly picturesque character. He even learned to appreciate the outlook from his house — that ‘second from the bridge’ of which so curious a presentment had entered into one of the poems of the ‘Men and Women’* — in spite of the refuse of humanity which would sometimes yell at the street corner, or fling stones at his plate-glass. But all this had to come; and it is only fair to admit that twenty-nine years ago the beauties of which I have spoken were in great measure to come also. He could not then in any mood have exclaimed, as he did to a friend two or three years ago: ‘Shall we not have a pretty London if things go on in this way?’ They were driving on the Kensington side of Hyde Park.
* ‘How it strikes a Contemporary’.
The paternal duty, which, so much against his inclination, had established Mr. Browning in England, would in every case have lain very near to his conscience and to his heart; but it especially urged itself upon them through the absence of any injunction concerning it on his wife’s part. No farewell words of hers had commended their child to his father’s love and care; and though he may, for the moment, have imputed this fact to unconsciousness of her approaching death, his deeper insight soon construed the silence into an expression of trust, more binding upon him than the most earnest exacted promise could have been. The growing boy’s education occupied a considerable part of his time and thoughts, for he had determined not to send him
to school, but, as far as possible, himself prepare him for the University. He must also, in some degree, have supervised his recreations. He had therefore, for the present, little leisure for social distractions, and probably at first very little inclination for them. His plan of life and duty, and the sense of responsibility attendant on it, had been communicated to Madame du Quaire in a letter written also from St.-Enogat.
M. Chauvin, St.-Enogat pres Dinard, Ile et Vilaine: Aug. 17, ‘61.
Dear Madame du Quaire, — I got your note on Sunday afternoon, but found myself unable to call on you as I had been intending to do. Next morning I left for this place (near St.-Malo, but I give what they say is the proper address). I want first to beg you to forgive my withholding so long your little oval mirror — it is safe in Paris, and I am vexed at having stupidly forgotten to bring it when I tried to see you. I shall stay here till the autumn sets in, then return to Paris for a few days — the first of which will be the best, if I can see you in the course of it — afterward, I settle in London.
When I meant to pass the winter in Paris, I hoped, the first thing almost, to be near you — it now seems to me, however, that the best course for the Boy is to begin a good English education at once. I shall take quiet lodgings (somewhere near Kensington Gardens, I rather think) and get a Tutor. I want, if I can (according to my present very imperfect knowledge) to get the poor little fellow fit for the University without passing thro’ a Public School. I, myself, could never have done much by either process, but he is made differently — imitates and emulates and all that. How I should be grateful if you would help me by any word that should occur to you! I may easily do wrong, begin ill, thro’ too much anxiety — perhaps, however, all may be easier than seems to me just now.
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 419