Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  In relation to some strictures on Carlyle, Miss Barrett vivaciously replies that his object is to discover the sun, not to specify the landscape, and that it would be a strange reproach to bring against the morning star that it does not shine in the evening.

  The idea of a lyrical drama, “Psyche Apocalypte,” was entertained by Mr. Horne and Miss Barrett, but, fortunately, no fragment of it was materialized into public light. There was a voluminous correspondence between them concerning this possible venture. Meanwhile Miss Barrett’s poems won success past her “expectation or hope. Blackwood’s high help was much,” she writes, “and I continue to have the kindest letters from unknown readers.... The American publisher has printed fifteen hundred copies. If I am a means of ultimate loss to him, I shall sit in sackcloth.”

  In another of her letters to Mr. Horne we read that Wordsworth is in a fever because of a projected railroad through the Lake Country, and that Carlyle calls Harriet Martineau “quite mad,” because of her belief in Mesmerism. “For my own part,” adds Miss Barrett, “I am not afraid to say that I almost believe in Mesmerism, and quite believe in Harriet Martineau.” She is delighted that Horne’s “Orion” is to be published in New York. “I love the Americans,” she asserts, “a noble and cordial people.”

  Miss Barrett remained for three years in Torquay, the climate being regarded as better for her health. But the tragedy of her life took place there in the drowning of her brother Edward, who went out one day with two friends in a boat and never returned. Three days later the boat was found floating, overturned, and the bodies of the three young men were recovered. This sad event occurred in the August of 1840, and it was more than a year before she was able to resume her literary work and her correspondence. In the September of 1841 she returned to London, and in a letter to Mr. Boyd soon after she replied to his references to Gregory as a poet, saying she has not much admiration even for his grand De Virginitate, and chiefly regards him as one who is only poetical in prose.

  Miss Barrett’s delicacy of health through all these years has been so universally recorded (and, according to her own words, so exaggerated) that it needs no more than passing allusion here. So far as possible she herself ignored it, and while it was always a factor to be reckoned with, yet her boundless mental energy tided her over illness and weakness to a far greater degree than has usually been realized. “My time goes to the best music when I read or write,” she says, “and whatever money I can spend upon my own pleasures flows away in books.”

  Elizabeth Barrett was the most sympathetic and affectionate of friends, and her devotion to literature resulted in no mere academic and abnormal life. Her letters are filled with all the little inquiries and interests of household affection and sweetness of sympathy with the personal matters of relatives and friends, and if those are not here represented, it is simply that they are in their nature colloquial, and to be taken for granted rather than repeated for reading, when so long separated by time from the conditions and circumstances that called them forth. She was glad to return from Torquay to her family again. “Papa’s domestic comfort is broken up by the separation,” she said, “and the associations of Torquay lie upon me, struggle against them as I may, like a nightmare.... Part of me is worn out; but the poetical part — that is, the love of poetry — is growing in me as freshly every day. Did anybody ever love poetry and stop in the middle? I wonder if any one ever could?... besides, I am becoming better. Dear Mr. Boyd,” she entreats, “do not write another word about my illness either to me or to others. I am sure you would not willingly disturb me. I can’t let ... prescribe anything for me except her own affection.” These words illustrate the spirit in which Miss Barrett referred to her own health. No one could be more remote from a morbid invalidism too often associated with her.

  One of her first efforts after her return from Torquay was to send to the Athenæum some Greek translations, which, to her surprise, were accepted, and she writes to Mr. Boyd that she would enclose to him the editor’s letter “if it were legible to anybody except people used to learn reading from the Pyramids.” It must have been due to a suggestion from the editor of the Athenæum at this time that she wrote her noble and affluent essay on “The Greek Christian Poets,” which is perhaps her finest work in prose. Something in the courteous editorial note suggested this to her, and she discusses the idea with Mr. Boyd.

  Mr. Dilke was then the editor of the Athenæum. He quite entered into the idea of this essay, only begging Miss Barrett to keep away from theology. Mr. Dilke also suggests that she write a review of English poetical literature, from Chaucer to contemporary times, and this initiated her essay called “The Book of the Poets.” For her Greek review she desired a copy of the Poetæ Christiani, but found the price (fourteen guineas) ruinous. But whether she had all the needful data or not, the first paper was a signal success, and she fancied that some bona avis, as good as a nightingale, had shaken its wings over her. Of the three Greek tragedians, Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, Elizabeth Barrett had read every line. Plato she loved and read exhaustively; of Aristotle at this time she had read his Ethics, Poetics, and his work on Rhetoric, and of Aristophanes a few, only, of his plays. But Miss Barrett was also a great novel-reader, keeping her “pillows stuffed with novels,” as she playfully declared. Her room, in the upper part of the house, revealed the haunt of the scholar. Upon a bracket the bust of Homer looked down; her bookcase showed one entire shelf occupied by the Greek poets; another relegated wholly to the English poets; and philosophy, ethics, science, and criticism were liberally represented. A bust of Chaucer companioned that of Homer. By her sofa nestled Flush, her dog, Miss Mitford’s gift.

  It was in this year of 1841 that there penetrated into her atmosphere and consciousness the first intimation of Robert Browning. “Pippa Passes” had just been published, and John Kenyon, ever alert to bring any happiness into the lives of his friends (Kenyon, “the joy-giver,” as he was well termed), suggested introducing the young poet to her, but on the plea of her ill-health she declined. A little later, in a letter to Mr. Boyd, she mentions one or two comments made on her essay, “The Greek Christian Poets,” — that Mr. Horne, and also “Mr. Browning, the poet,” had both, as she was told, expressed approval. “Mr. Browning is said to be learned in Greek,” she adds, “especially the dramatists.” So already the air begins to stir and tremble with the coming of him of whom in later days she wrote:

  “I yield the grave for thy sake, and resign

  My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee.”

  The entrancing thrill of that wonderful Wagner music that ushers in the first appearance of the knight in the music-drama of “Lohengrin” is typical of the vibrations that thrill the air in some etherial announcement of experiences that are on the very threshold, and which are recognized by a nature as sensitive and impressionable as was that of Elizabeth Barrett. A new element with its transfiguring power awaited her, and some undefined prescience of that

  “... most gracious singer of high poems”

  whose music was to fall at her door

  “... in folds of golden fulness”

  haunted her like “an odor from Dreamland sent.”

  She pondered on

  “... how Theocritus had sung

  Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,”

  but she dared not dream that the “mystic Shape” that drew her backward, and whose voice spoke “in mastery,” had come to lead her, — not to Death, but Love.

  CHAPTER V. 1841-1846

  “... If a man could feel,

  Not one day in the artist’s ecstasy,

  But every day, — feast, fast, or working-day,

  The spiritual significance burn through

  The hieroglyphic of material shows,

  Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings.”

  “Bells and Pomegranates” — Arnould and Domett— “A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon” — Macready — Second Visit To Italy — Miss Barrett’s P
oetic Work— “Colombe’s Birthday”— “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”— “Romances And Lyrics” — Browning’s First Letter To Miss Barrett — The Poets Meet — Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett— “Loves of the Poets” — Vita Nuova.

  The appearance of “Bells and Pomegranates” made a deep impression on Elizabeth Barrett, as the numbers, opening with “Pippa Passes,” successively appeared between 1841 and 1846. Of “Pippa” she said she could find it in her heart to covet the authorship, and she felt all the combinations of effect to be particularly “striking and noble.” In a paper that Miss Barrett wrote in these days for the Athenæum, critically surveying the poetic outlook of the time, she referred to Browning and Tennyson as “among those high and gifted spirits who would still work and wait.” When this London journal reviewed (not too favorably) Browning’s “Romances and Lyrics,” Miss Barrett took greatly to heart the injustice that she felt was done him, and reverted to it in a number of personal letters, expressing her conviction that “it would be easier to find a more faultless writer than a poet of equal genius.” An edition of Tennyson, in two volumes, came out, including the “Ulysses,” “Morte d’Arthur,” “Locksley Hall,” and “Œnone,” of which she says no one quite appeals to her as does “Œnone,” and she expresses her belief that philosophic thinking, like music, is always involved in high ideality of any kind. Wordsworth she insisted upon estimating from his best, not from his poorest work, and his “Ode” was to her so grand as to atone for a multitude of poetic sins. “I confess,” she wrote to Boyd, “that he is not unfrequently heavy and dull, and that Coleridge has an intenser genius.” To her cousin, Kenyon, Miss Barrett sent the manuscript of her poem, “The Dead Pan,” which he showed to Browning, who wrote of it to Kenyon with ardent admiration. This note was sent to Miss Barrett, who displayed it to Horne that he might see the opinion of the poet whom they both admired. Still later, Horne published in his “New Spirit of the Age” sketches of several writers with their portraits; and those of Carlyle, Miss Martineau, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, Miss Barrett had framed for her own room. She asked Kenyon if that of Browning were a good one. “Rather like,” he replied. So here and there the Fates were invisibly at work, forging the subtle threads that were drawing the poets unconsciously nearer.

  It was the suggestion of Browning’s publisher, Moxon, that “Bells and Pomegranates” might be issued in pamphlet form, appearing at intervals, as this plastic method would be comparatively inexpensive, and would also permit the series to be stopped at any time if its success was not of a degree to warrant continuance. The poet found his title, as he afterward explained in a letter to Miss Barrett, in Exodus, “... upon the hem of the robe thou shalt make pomegranates of blue and of purple, and of scarlet, and bells of gold between them round about.” After “Pippa Passes” there followed “King Victor and King Charles,” a number of Lyrics, “The Return of the Druses,” “A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon,” “Luria,” and “A Soul’s Tragedy.” On each of the title-pages the author was named as the writer of “Paracelsus,” “Sordello” being ignored. Among the dedications of these several numbers those so honored included John Kenyon, Proctor, and Talfourd.

  Browning offered “A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon” to Macready (whose stage fortunes at this period were not brilliant), with the remark that “The luck of the third venture is proverbial.” The actor consulted Forster, who passed the play on to Dickens, to whom it deeply appealed. Under date of November 25, 1842, Dickens wrote of it to Forster in the most enthusiastic words, saying the reading of it had thrown him “into a perfect passion of sorrow,” and that it was “full of genius, natural, and great thoughts,... and I swear it is a tragedy that must be played, and played by Macready,” continued the novelist. “And tell Browning that I believe from my soul there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a work.” Forster did not, however, administer this consolation to the young author, who was only to learn of Dickens’s admiration thirty years later, when Forster’s biography of him appeared. The story of the production of the play is told in a letter from Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett (then in New Zealand), written under date of May, 1843, dated from Arnould’s home in Victoria Square, Pimlico:

  “As one must begin somewhere, suppose we take Browning.... In February his play, ‘A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon,’ was announced as forthcoming at Drury Lane.... Meantime, judicious friends had a habit of asking when the play was coming out....”

  A long chapter of vexations is humorously described by Domett, who concludes his letter with this tribute to the play.

  “... With some of the finest situations and grandest passages you can conceive, it does undoubtedly want a sustained interest to the end of the third act; in fact the whole of that act on the stage is a falling off from the second, which I need not tell you is, for purposes of performance, the most unpardonable fault. Still, it will no doubt — nay, it must — have done this, viz., produced a higher opinion than ever of Browning’s genius and the great things he is yet to do, in the minds not only of a clique, but of the general world of readers. This man will go far yet....”

  While this vexation cancelled the friendly relations that had existed between Browning and Macready, it fostered the friendship between the poet and Helen Faucit (later Lady Martin), who remembered Browning’s attitude “as full of generous sympathy” for the actors of the cast; while he recalled Miss Faucit’s “perfect behavior as a woman, and her admirable playing, as the one gratifying factor” in the affair. But Browning was too noble by nature for any lasting resentment, and meeting Macready soon after the death of both his own wife, in Italy, and of Mrs. Macready, he could only grasp his old friend’s hand and exclaim with emotion, “Oh, Macready!”

  In the autumn of 1844 Browning set forth for Italy on his second visit. Two years before his friend Domett had left England for New Zealand, commemorated by the poet in the lines, —

  “How, forsooth, was I to know it

  If Waring meant to glide away

  Like a ghost at break of day.”

  Browning landed at Naples, and there, according to Mrs. Orr, he became acquainted with a young Neapolitan, Signor Scotti, who took the bargaining of their tour upon himself, after they had agreed to travel together, “and now as I write,” said Mr. Browning in a letter from his Naples hotel to his sister Sarianna, “I hear him disputing our bill. He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles when we have used only two.” The pair wandered over the enchanting shores of all the Naples region, lingered in Sorrento, drove over the picturesque road to Amalfi, and listened to the song of the sirens along the shore. Their arrival in Rome was Browning’s first sight of the Eternal City. Here Mr. Browning found an old friend, the Contessa Carducci, with whom the two passed most of their evenings. He made his poetic pilgrimage to the graves of Shelley and Keats, as do all later pilgrims, and he visited the grotto of Egeria in memory of Byron. He loitered in the old chiesa near Santa Maria Maggiore, where the sixteenth century Bishop “ordered his tomb,” and he visited Trelawney in Leghorn. There exists little record of this trip save in the poem “The Englishman in Italy,” and his return to England through Germany is alike unrecorded.

  Six years had passed since the publication of “The Seraphim and Other Poems,” and on Mr. Browning’s arrival at home again, he found two new volumes of Miss Barrett’s, entitled simply “Poems,” in which were “A Drama of Exile,” “Bertha in the Lane,” “Catarina to Camoens,” “A Vision of Poets,” nearly all of the sonnets that she ever wrote save that immortal sequence, “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” and “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” These volumes absolutely established her poetic rank with that of Tennyson and Browning. She “heard the nations praising her far off.” While she had many expressions of grateful gladness for all this chorus of praise with hardly a dissenting voice, the verdict did not affect her own high standards. “I have written these poems as well as I could,” she says, “and I hope to write others better
. I have not reached my own ideal ... but I love poetry more than I love my own successes in it.”

  Her love of absolute truth, and the absence of any petty self-love in her character, stand out in any study of her life. “Why, if you had told me that my books were without any value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship?” she writes to a friend.

  The reviews are eminently appreciative and satisfying. Blackwood’s gave a long critique in a special article, frankly pointing out faults, but asserting that her merits far outweighed her defects, and that her genius “was profound, unsullied, and without a flaw.” The long poem, “A Drama of Exile” was pronounced the least successful of all, and the prime favorite was “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” Of this poem of ninety-two stanzas, with eleven more in its “Conclusion,” thirty-five of the stanzas, or one hundred and forty-four lines, were written in one day.

  Though lack of health largely restricted Miss Barrett to her room, her sympathies and interests were world-wide. She read the reviews of the biography of Dr. Arnold, a work she desired to read, entire, and records that “Dr. Arnold must have been a man in the largest and noblest sense.” She rejoices in the refutation of Puseyism that is offered in the Edinburgh Review; she reads “an admirable paper by Macaulay” in the same number; she comments on the news that Newman has united himself with the Catholic Church; and in one letter she writes that Mr. Horne has not returned to England and adds: “Mr. Browning is not in England, either, so that whatever you send for him must await his return from the east, or west, or south, wherever he is; Dickens is in Italy; even Miss Mitford talks of going to France, and the ‘New Spirit of the Age’ is a wandering spirit.”