In her “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” had occurred the lines:
“Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”
A certain consciousness of each other already stirred in the air for Browning and Miss Barrett, and still closer were the Fates drawing the subtle threads of destiny.
It was in this November that Mrs. Jameson first came into Miss Barrett’s life, coming to the door with a note, and “overcoming by kindness was let in.” This initiated a friendship that was destined in the near future to play its salient part in the life of Elizabeth Barrett. In what orderly sequence the links of life appear, viewed retrospectively!
She “gently wrangles” with Mr. Boyd for addressing her as “Miss Barrett,” deprecating such cold formality, and offering him his choice of her little pet name “Ba” or of Elizabeth.
She reads Hans Christian Andersen’s “Improvisatore,” and in reply to some expressed wonder at her reading so many novels she avows herself “the most complete and unscrupulous romance reader” possible; and adds that her love of fiction began with her breath, and will end with it; “and it goes on increasing. On my tombstone may be written,” she continued, “‘Ci gît the greatest novel reader in the world,’ and nobody will forbid the inscription.”
And so the prelude of her life draws to a close, and the future is to be no more the mere living “with visions for her company,” for now, in this January of 1845, she has a letter from Browning, and she writes: “I had a letter from Browning, the poet, last night, which threw me into ecstasies, — Browning, the author of ‘Paracelsus,’ and king of the mystics.” Not long after she writes that she is getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning, and that they are growing to be the truest of friends. Lowell writes to Miss Barrett regarding her poems, though the letter does not seem to be anywhere on record, and she writes to Mr. Westwood that in her view Mr. Browning’s power is of a very high order, and that he must read “Paracelsus.” In its author she finds one who “speaks true oracles.” She finds “Colombe’s Birthday” exquisite, and “Pippa Passes” she “kneels to, with deepest reverence.”
The first letter of Browning to Miss Barrett was written on January 10 of this year (1845), and he began with the words: “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett.” He enters into the “fresh strange music, the exquisite pathos, and true, brave thought” of her work; and reminds her that Kenyon once asked him if he would like to see Miss Barrett, but that she did not feel able, and he felt as if close to some world’s wonder, but the half-opened door shut. Her reply, which is dated the next day, thanks him for his sympathy and offers him her gratitude, “agreeing that of all the commerce from Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing.” And she craves a lasting obligation in that he shall suggest her master-faults in poetry. She does not pretend to any extraordinary meekness under criticism, and possibly might not be at all obedient to it, but she has such high respect for his power in Art, and his experience as an artist. She refers to Mr. Kenyon as her friend and helper, and her books’ friend and helper, “critic and sympathizer, true friend at all hours!” and she adds that “while I live to follow this divine art of poetry ... I must be a devout student and admirer of your works.”
Browning is made very happy by her words, and he feels that his poor praise “was nearly as felicitously brought out as a certain tribute to Tasso, which amused me in Rome some weeks ago,” he says. “In a neat penciling on the wall by his tomb at Sant’ Onofrio— ‘Alla cara memoria — di — Torquato Tasso — il Dottore Bernardini — offriva — il sequente Carme — tu’ — and no more; the good man, it would seem, breaking down with the over-load of love here! But my ‘O tu’ was breathed out most sincerely, and now you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will come after.” And then he must repeat (to himself) that her poetry must be infinitely more to him than his could be to her, “for you do what I have only hoped to do.” And he hopes she will nevermore talk of “the honor” of his acquaintance, but he will joyfully wait for the delight of her friendship. And to his fear that she may hate letter-writing she replies suggesting that nobody likes writing to everybody, but it would be strange and contradictory if she were not always delighted to hear from and to write to him; and she can read any manuscript except the writing on the pyramids, and if he will only treat her en bon camarade “without reference to the conventionalities of ‘ladies and gentlemen’”; taking no thought for his sentences (or hers), “nor for your badd speling nor for mine,” she is ready to sign and seal the contract of correspondence. And while she throws off the ceremony, she holds faster to the kindness. She is overjoyed with this cordial sympathy. “Is it true,” she asks, “that I know so little of you? And is it true that the productions of an artist do not partake of his real nature? It is not true to my mind, — and therefore it is not true that I know little of you, except in so far as it is true that your greatest works are to come.... I think — if I may dare name myself with you in the poetic relation — that we both have high views of the Art we follow and steadfast purpose in the pursuit of it.... And that neither of us would be likely to be thrown from the course by the casting of any Atalanta ball of speedy popularity.
“And after all that has been said and mused upon the anxiety experienced by the true artist, — is not the good immeasurably greater than the evil? For my part I sometimes wonder how, without such an object and purpose of life, people contrive to live at all.”
And her idea of happiness “lies deep in poetry and its associations.” And he replies that what he has printed “gives no knowledge of me,” and that he has never begun what he hopes he was born to begin and end— “R. B. a poem.”
“Do you know Tennyson?” she asks, “that is, with a face to face knowledge? I have great admiration for him,” she continues. “In execution he is exquisite, — and in music a most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs.” And she asks if he knows what it is to covet his neighbor’s poetry, — not his fame, but his poetry. It delights her to hear of his garden full of roses and his soul full of comforts. She finds the conception of his Pippa “most exquisite, and altogether original.”
In one of Miss Barrett’s letters a few weeks later there seems discernible a forecast of “Aurora Leigh,” when she writes that her chief intention is the writing “of a sort of novel-poem,” and one “as completely modern as ‘Geraldine’s Courtship,’ running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms and the like ‘where angels fear to tread’; and so meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth, as I conceive of it, out plainly.” She is waiting for a story; she will not take one, because she likes to make her own. Here is without doubt the first conception of “Aurora Leigh.”
Touching on Life in another letter, she records her feeling that “the brightest place in the house is the leaning out of the window.”
Browning replies: “And pray you not to lean out of the window when my own foot is only on the stair.”...
“But I did not mean to strike a tragic chord,” she replies; “indeed I did not. As to ‘escaping with my life,’ it was just a phrase ... for the rest I am essentially better ... and feel as if it were intended for me to live and not to die.” And referring to a passage relating to Prometheus she asks: “And tell me, if Æschylus is not the divinest of all the divine Greek souls?” She continues:
“But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not to think — whatever I may have written or implied — that I lean either to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through darkness instead of light ... and after a course of bitter mental discipline and long bodily seclusion I come out with two lessons learned — the wisdom of cheerfulness and the duty of social intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in society.... What we call life is a
condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault.... And I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to happiness, and I feel it to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.... Remember, that as you owe your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to His world. I thank you for some of it already.”
And she feels how kind he is, — how gently and kindly he speaks to her. In his next letter he alludes with much feeling to her idea of the poem-novel:
“The Poem you propose to make; the fresh, fearless, living work you describe, is the only Poem to be undertaken now by you or any one who is a poet at all; the only reality, only effective piece of service to be rendered God or man; it is what I have been all my life intending to do, and now shall be much nearer doing since you will be along with me. And you can do it, I know and am sure, — so sure that I could find it in my heart to be jealous of your stopping on the way even to translate the Prometheus....”
The lovers, for such they already are, however unconsciously to both, fall into a long discussion of Prometheus, and the Greek drama in general, and in another letter, with allusion to his begging her to take her own good time in writing, she half playfully proffers that it is her own bad time to which she must submit. “This implacable weather!” she writes; “this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and the moon!... There will be a May and June if we live to see such things,” and then she speaks of seeing him besides, and while she recognizes it is morbid to shrink and grow pale in the spirit, yet not all her fine philosophy about social duties quite carries her through. But “if he thinks she shall not like to see him, he is wrong, for all his learning.” What pathos of revelation of this brave, celestial spirit, tenanting the most fragile of bodies, is read in the ensuing passage:
“What you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly, or with sorrow for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness I was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, known more, of society, than I, who am hardly to be called young now. I grew up in the country, had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience in reveries.... Books and dreams were what I lived in — and domestic life seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass.... Why, if I live on and escape this seclusion, do you not perceive that I labor under signal disadvantages, that I am, in a manner, a blind poet?... I have had much of the inner life ... but how willingly would I exchange some of this ponderous, helpless knowledge of books for some experience of life.... But grumbling is a vile thing, and we should all thank God for our measures of life, and think them enough.... Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write — it is life for me. Why, what is it to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe, — but to feel the life in you down all the fibers of being, passionately and joyfully....
“Ah, you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus!... I am inclined to think that we want new forms.... The old gods are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds? If it is a necessity of Art to do this, then those critics are right who hold that Art is exhausted.... I do not believe this; and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to Life.... For there is poetry everywhere....”
Miss Barrett writes to him, continuing the discussion of poetry as an Art, that she does not want “material as material, but that every life requires a full experience,” and she has a profound conviction that a poet is at a lamentable disadvantage if he has been shut from most of the outer aspects of life. And he, replying, deprecates a little the outward life for a poet, with amusing references to a novel of D’Israeli’s, where, “lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there, and a detachment of the party is drafted off to catch butterflies.” But still he partly agrees, and feels that her Danish novel (“The Improvisatore”) must be full of truth and beauty, and “that a Dane should write so, confirms me in a belief that Italy is stuff for the use of the North and no more — pure Poetry there is none, as near as possible none, in Dante, even;... and Alfieri,... with a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colorless as salad grown under a garden glass....” But she — if she asks questions about novels it is because she wants to see him by the refracted lights, as well as by the direct ones; and Dante’s poetry— “only material for northern rhymers?” She must think of that before she agrees with him.
As for Browning, he bids her remember that he writes letters to no one but her; but there is never enough of telling her.... And she, noting his sitting up in the morning till six, and sleeping only till nine, wants to know “how ‘Lurias’ can be made out of such ungodly imprudences? And what is the reasonableness of it,” she questions, “when we all know that thinking, dreaming, creative people, like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others”; and he is anticipating the day when he shall see her with his own eyes, and now a day is named on which he will call, and he begs her not to mind his coming in the least, for if she does not feel able to see him he will come again, and again, as his time is of no importance.
It was on the afternoon of May 20 (1845) that Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett first met, and of them it could almost have been said, in words ascribed to Michael Angelo for Vittoria Colonna, —
“We are the only two, that, face to face,
Do know each other, as God doth know us both.”
It is said that the first letter of Browning’s to her after this meeting is the only one destroyed of all this wonderful correspondence; and this was such a letter as could only be interpreted into a desire for marriage, which she, all tender thoughtfulness always for others, characteristically felt would be fatal to his happiness because of her invalid state. He begged her to return the letter, and he then destroyed it; and again pleaded that their friendship and intellectual comradeship should continue. “Your friendship and sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed leave them with me so long, or so little,” she writes; and she utterly forbids any further expression or she must do this “to be in my own eyes and before God a little more worthy, or a little less unworthy, of a generosity....” And he discreetly veils his ardors for the time, and the wonderful letters run on.
Monument to Michael Angelo, by Vasari
church of santa croce.
“They are safe in heaven....
The Michaels and Rafaels....”
Old Pictures in Florence.
He is writing “The Flight of the Duchess,” and sending it to her by installments; she finds it “past speaking of,” and she also refers to “exquisite pages” of Landor’s in the “Pentameron.” And poems which he has left with her, — she must have her own gladness from them in her own way. And did he go to Chelsea, and hear the divine philosophy?
Apparently he did, for he writes:
“Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone — his wife is in the country where he will join her as soon as the book’s last proof sheets are corrected.... He was all kindness, and talked like his own self while he made me tea — and would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge with me on my way home.”
She writes:
“I had a letter yesterday from Charles Hemans, the son of Felicia, ... who says his mother’s memory is surrounded to him ‘with almost a divine lustre,’... and is not that better than your tradition about Shelley’s son? and is it not pleasant to know that the noble, pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our country, should be so loved and comprehended by one, at least, of her own house?”
Under date of August 25, Miss Barrett has been moved to write out the pathetic story of her brother Edward’s death. He had accompanied her to Torquay, — he, “the kindest, the noblest, the dearest, and when the time came for him to return I, weake
ned by illness, could not master my spirits or drive back my tears,” and he then decided not to leave her. “And ten days from that day,” she continued, “the boat left the shore which never returned — and he had left me! For three days we waited, — oh, that awful agony of three days!... Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have never said so much to a living being — I never could speak or write of it....”
But he writes her that “better than being happy in her happiness, is it to participate in her sorrow.” And the very last day of that August he writes that he has had such power over himself as to keep silent ... but “Let me say now — this only once, — that I loved you from my soul, and gave you my life, as much of it as you would take, and all that ... is independent of any return on your part.” She assures him that he has followed the most generous of impulses toward her, “yet I cannot help adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part.” She confesses how deeply she is affected by his words, “but what could I speak,” she questions, “that would not be unjust to you?... Your life! if you gave it to me and I put my whole heart into it, what should I put in but anxiety, and more sadness than you were born to? What could I give you which it would not be ungenerous to give?”
There was a partial plan that Miss Barrett should pass that next winter in Pisa, but owing to the strange and incalculable disposition of her father, who, while he loved her, was singularly autocratic in his treatment, the plan was abandoned. All this sorrow may have contributed to her confession to Browning that no man had ever been to her feelings what he was; and that if she were different in some respects she would accept the great trust of his happiness.... “But we may be friends always,” she continues, “and cannot be so separated that the knowledge of your happiness will not increase mine.... Worldly thoughts these are not at all, there need be no soiling of the heart with any such;... you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I do,... and even if I wished to be very poor, in the world’s sense of poverty, I could not, with three or four hundred a year, of which no living will can dispossess me. And is not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?” But he, perfect in his beautiful trust and tenderness, was “joyfully confident” that the way would open, and he thanks God that, to the utmost of his power, he has not been unworthy of having been introduced to her. He is “no longer in the first freshness of his life” and had for years felt it impossible that he should ever love any woman. But he will wait. That she “cannot dance like Cerito” does not materially disarrange his plan! And by the last of those September days she confesses that she is his “for everything but to do him harm,” he has touched her so profoundly, and now “none, except God and your own will, shall interpose between you and me.” And he answered her in such words as these:
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 238