Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert has brought me home a most perfect copy of a small torso of Venus — from the Greek — in the clay. It is wonderfully done, say the learned. He says ‘all his happiness lies in clay now’; that was his speech to me this morning. Not a compliment, but said so sincerely and fervently, that I could not but sympathise and wish him a life-load of clay to riot in. It’s the mixture of physical and intellectual effort which makes the attraction, I imagine. Certainly he is very well and very gay.

  I am happy to see that the ‘North British Quarterly’ has an article on him. That gives hope for England. Thackeray has turned me out of the ‘Cornhill’ for indecency, but did it so prettily and kindly that I, who am forgiving, sent him another poem. He says that plain words permitted on Sundays must not be spoken on Mondays in England, and also that his ‘Magazine is for babes and sucklings.’ (I thought it was for the volunteers.)

  May God bless you, dearest Sarianna and nonno! Pen’s love.

  The incident alluded to in the last paragraph deserves fuller mention, for the credit it does to both parties concerned in it. The letters that passed between Thackeray and Mrs. Browning on the subject have been given by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for July 1896, from which I am allowed to quote them. Mrs. Browning, in reply to a request from Thackeray for contributions to the then newly established ‘Cornhill,’ had sent him, among other poems, ‘Lord Walter’s Wife,’ of which, though the moral is unimpeachable, the subject is not absolutely virginibus puerisque. The editor, in this difficulty, wrote the following admirable letter: —

  W.M. Thackeray to Mrs. Browning.

  36 Onslow Square: April 2, 1861.

  My dear, kind Mrs. Browning, — Has Browning ever had an aching tooth which must come out (I don’t say Mrs. Browning, for women are much more courageous) — a tooth which must come out, and which he has kept for months and months away from the dentist? I have had such a tooth a long time, and have sate down in this chair, and never had the courage to undergo the pull.

  This tooth is an allegory (I mean this one). It’s your poem that you sent me months ago, and who am I to refuse the poems of Elizabeth Browning and set myself up as a judge over her? I can’t tell you how often I have been going to write and have failed. You see that our Magazine is written not only for men and women but for boys, girls, infants, sucklings almost; and one of the best wives, mothers, women in the world writes some verses which I feel certain would be objected to by many of our readers. Not that the writer is not pure, and the moral most pure, chaste, and right, but there are things my squeamish public will not hear on Monday, though on Sundays they listen to them without scruple. In your poem, you know, there is an account of unlawful passion, felt by a man for a woman, and though you write pure doctrine, and real modesty, and pure ethics, I am sure our readers would make an outcry, and so I have not published this poem.

  To have to say no to my betters is one of the hardest duties I have, but I’m sure we must not publish your verses, and I go down on my knees before cutting my victim’s head off, and say, ‘Madam, you know how I respect and regard you, Browning’s wife and Penini’s mother; and for what I am going to do I most humbly ask your pardon.’

  My girls send their very best regards and remembrances, and I am, dear Mrs. Browning,

  Always yours,

  W.M. Thackeray.

  Mrs. Browning’s answer follows.

  To W.M. Thackeray

  Rome, 126 Via Felice: April 21, .

  Dear Mr. Thackeray, — Pray consider the famous ‘tooth’ (a wise tooth!) as extracted under chloroform, and no pain suffered by anybody.

  To prove that I am not sulky, I send another contribution, which may prove too much, perhaps — and, if you think so, dispose of the supererogatory virtue by burning the manuscript, as I am sure I may rely on your having done with the last.

  I confess it, dear Mr. Thackeray, never was anyone turned out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious and conciliatory manner! Also, I confess that from your ‘Cornhill’ standpoint (paterfamilias looking on) you are probably right ten times over. From mine, however, I may not be wrong, and I appeal to you as the deep man you are, whether it is not the higher mood, which on Sunday bears with the ‘plain word,’ so offensive on Monday, during the cheating across the counter? I am not a ‘fast woman.’ I don’t like coarse subjects, or the coarse treatment of any subject. But I am deeply convinced that the corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air: and that it is exactly because pure and prosperous women choose to ignore vice, that miserable women suffer wrong by it everywhere. Has paterfamilias, with his Oriental traditions and veiled female faces, very successfully dealt with a certain class of evil? What if materfamilias, with her quick sure instincts and honest innocent eyes, do more towards their expulsion by simply looking at them and calling them by their names? See what insolence you put me up to by your kind way of naming my dignities— ‘Browning’s wife and Penini’s mother.’

  And I, being vain (turn some people out of a room and you don’t humble them properly), retort with— ‘materfamilias!’

  Our friend Mr. Story has just finished a really grand statue of the ‘African Sybil.’ It will place him very high.

  Where are you all, Annie, Minnie? — Why don’t you come and see us in Rome?

  My husband bids me give you his kind regards, and I shall send Pen’s love with mine to your dear girls.

  Most truly yours,

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  We go to Florence in the latter part of May.

  Before leaving Florence, however, the following letter was written to Mr. Thackeray, which I quote from the same article by Mrs. Ritchie. The poem alluded to must, however, be ‘The North and the South,’ Mrs. Browning’s last poem, written with reference to Hans Andersen’s visit to Rome; not ‘A Musical Instrument,’ as Mrs. Ritchie suggests, which had been written some time previously.

  To W.M. Thackeray

  Rome, 126 Via Felice: [May 21, 1861].

  Dear Mr. Thackeray, — I hope you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won’t think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency.

  But Hans Christian Andersen is here, charming us all, and not least the children. So I wrote these verses — not for ‘Cornhill’ this month, of course — though I send them now that they may lie over at your service (if you are so pleased) for some other month of the summer.

  We go to Florence on the first of June, and lo! here is the twenty-first of May.

  With love to dear Annie and Minny,

  I remain, most truly yours,

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  To Miss I. Blagden

  Rome: Saturday, [about May 1861].

  Ever dearest Isa, — Now that Robert’s letter is gone, I am able for shame to write. His waiting did not mean a slackness of kindness, but a tightness of entanglement in other things; and then absolutely he has got to the point of doing without reading. Nothing but clay does he care for, poor lost soul. But you will see, I hope, from what he has written (to judge by what he speaks), that he is not so lost as to be untouched by Agnes....

  I send you, dear, two more translations for Dall’ Ongaro. You will have given him my former message. I began that letter to him, and was interrupted; and then, considering the shortness of our time here, would not begin another. You will have explained, and will make him thoroughly understand, that in sending him a verbal and literal translation I never thought of exacting such a thing from him, but simply of letting him have the advantage of seeing the raw, naked poetry as it stands. In fact, my translation is scarcely Italian, I know very well. I mean it for English rather. Conventional and idiomatical Italian forms have been expressly avoided. I have used the Italian as a net to catch the English in for the use of an Italian poet! Let him understand.

  We shall be soon in our Florence now. I am rather stronger, but so weak still that my eyes daz
zle to think of it. Povera me!

  Tell Dall’ Ongaro that his friend M. Carl Grün had enough of me in one visit. He never came again, though I prayed him to come. I have not been equal to receiving in the evening, and perhaps he expected an invitation. I go to bed at eight on most nights. I’m the rag of a Ba. Yet I am stronger, and look much so, it seems to me. Mr. Story is doing Robert’s bust, which is likely to be a success. Hatty brought us a most charming design for a fountain for Lady Marion Alford. The imagination is unfolding its wings in Hatty. She is quite of a mind to spend the summer with you at Florence or elsewhere. The Storys talk of Switzerland....

  Andersen (the Dane) came to see me yesterday — kissed my hand, and seemed in a general verve for embracing. He is very earnest, very simple, very childlike. I like him. Pen says of him, ‘He is not really pretty. He is rather like his own ugly duck, but his mind has developed into a swan.’

  That wasn’t bad of Pen, was it? He gets on with his Latin too. And, Isa, he has fastened a half-franc to his button-hole, for the sake of the beloved image, and no power on earth can persuade him out of being so ridiculous. I was base enough to say that it wouldn’t please the Queen of Spain! And he responded, he ‘chose her to know that he did love Napoleon’!

  Isa, I send these two last poems that Dall’ Ongaro may be aware of my sympathy’s comprehending more sides than one of Italian experience.

  We have taken no apartment yet!!!

  To Miss Browning

  Florence: June 7, 1861 [postmark].

  I can’t let Robert’s disagreeable letter go alone, dearest Sarianna, though my word will be as heavy as a stone at the bottom of it. I am deeply sorry you should have had the vain hope of seeing Robert and Pen. As for me, I know my place; I am only good for a drag chain. But, dear, don’t fancy it has been the fault of my will. In fact, I said almost too much at Rome to Robert, till he fancied I had set my selfwill on tossing myself up as a halfpenny, and coming down on the wrong side. Now, in fact, it was not at all (nearly) for Arabel that I wished to go, only I did really wish and do my best to go. He, on the other hand, before we left Rome, had made up his mind (helped by a stray physician of mine, whom he met in the street) that it would be a great risk to carry me north. He (Robert) always a little exaggerates the difficulties of travelling, and there’s no denying that I have less strength than is usual to me even at the present time. I touched the line of vexing him, with my resistance to the decision, but he is so convinced that repose is necessary for me, and that the lions in the path will be all asleep by this time next year, that I yielded. Certainly he has a right to command me away from giving him unnecessary anxieties. What does vex me is that the dearest nonno should not see his Peni this year, and that you, dear, should be disappointed, on my account again. That’s hard on us all. We came 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. There is a hope that certain solutions had been prepared between him and the Emperor, and that events will slide into their grooves. May God save Italy! Dear M. Milsand had pleased me so by his appreciation, but there are great difficulties. The French press, tell him, has, on the whole, done great service, except that part of it under the influence of the ultramontane and dynastic opposition parties. And as to exaggerated statements, it is hard, even here, to get at the truth (with regard to the state of the south), and many Italian liberals have had hours of anxiety and even of despondency. English friends of ours, very candid and liberal, have gone to Naples full of hope, and returned hoping nothing — yet they are wrong, unless this bitter loss makes them right —

  Your loving Ba —

  Robert tears me away —

  With this letter the correspondence of Mrs. Browning, so far, at least, as it is extant or accessible, comes to an end. The journey to Paris had been abandoned, but it does not appear that there was any cause to apprehend that her life could now be reckoned only by days. Yet so it was. For the past three years, it is evident, her strength had been giving way. Attacks of physical illness weakened her, without being followed by any adequate rally; but more than all, the continuous stress and strain of mental anxiety wore her strength away. The war of 1859, the liberation of Sicily and Naples, the intense irritation of feeling in connection with English opinion of Louis Napoleon and his policy, the continual ebb and flow of rumours concerning Venetia and the Papal States, the illness and death of her sister Henrietta — all these sources of anxiety told terribly on her sensitive, emotional mind, and thereby on her enfeebled body. The fragility of her appearance had always struck strangers. So far back as 1851, Bayard Taylor remarked that ‘her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul.’ Her ‘fiery soul’ did, indeed, with a far more literal truth than can often be the case, fret her ‘puny body to decay, and o’er-informed its tenement of clay.’ Her last illness — or, it may more truly be said, the last phase of that illness which had been present with her for years — was neither long nor severe; but she had no more strength left to resist it. Shortly after her return to Casa Guidi another bronchial attack developed itself, to all appearance just like many others that she had had before; but this time there was no recovery.

  Of the last scene no other account need be asked or wished for than that given by Mr. Browning himself in a letter to Miss Haworth, dated 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 that 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 Himself 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. The last word was, when I asked, ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Beautiful.’...

  So ended on earth the most perfect example of wedded happiness in the history of literature — perfect in the inner life and perfect in its poetical expression. It was on June 29, 1861, that Mrs. Browning died. She was buried at Florence, where her body rests in a sarcophagus designed by her friend and her husband’s friend, Frederic Leighton, the fu
ture President of the Royal Academy. At a later date, when her husband was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, her remains might have been transferred to England, to lie with his among the great company of English poets in which they had earned their places. But it was thought better, on the whole, to leave them undisturbed in the land and in the city which she had loved so well, and which had been her home so long. In life and in death she had been made welcome in Florence. The Italians, as her husband said, seemed to have understood her by an instinct; and upon the walls of Casa Guidi is a marble slab, placed there by the municipality of Florence, and bearing an inscription from the pen of the Italian poet, Tommaséo: —

  QUI SCRISSE E MORÌ

  ELISABETTA BARRETT BROWNING

  CHE IN CUORE DI DONNA CONCILIAVA

  SCIENZA DI DOTTO E SPIRITO DI POETA

  E FECE DEL SUO VERSO AUREO ANELLO

  FRA ITALIA E INGHILTERRA.

  PONE QUESTA LAPIDE

  FIRENZE GRATA

  1861.

  It is with words adapted from this memorial that her husband, seven years later, closed his own great poem, praying that the ‘ring,’ to which he likens it, might but —

  ‘Lie outside thine, Lyric Love, Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised), Linking our England to his Italy.’

  The Biographies

  Barrett Browning, 1858

  The Brownings: Their Life and Art by Lilian Whiting

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER I. 1812-1833

  CHAPTER II. 1806-1832

  CHAPTER III. 1833-1841

  CHAPTER IV. 1833-1841