Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  “When I come back from seeing you and think over it all, there is never a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with....”

  In a subsequent letter Elizabeth Barrett questions: “Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for you? if so it was well done.” And she sends thanks to Browning’s sister, Sarianna, for a copy of Landor’s verses.

  And with all these gracious and tenderly exquisite personal matters, the letters are yet brilliant in literary allusion and criticism.

  During these three years from 1844 to 1847 were written the greater number of Miss Barrett’s finest lyrics. Those two remarkable poems, “A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress” and “Confessions”; “Loved Once”; “The Sleep” (the poem which was read at her burial in the lovely, cypress-crowned cemetery in Florence, and whose stanzas, set to music, were chanted by the choir in Westminster Abbey when the body of her husband was laid in the “Poets’ Corner”), “The Dead Pan,” and that most exquisite lyric of all, “Catarina to Camoens,” were all written during this period.

  The title of the latter was but a transparent veil for her own feelings toward Robert Browning, and had she died in his absence, as Catarina did in that of Camoens, the words would have expressed her own feeling. What profound pathos is in the line,

  “Death is near me, — and not you,”

  and how her own infinite sweetness of spirit is mirrored in the stanza,

  “I will look out to his future;

  I will bless it till it shine,

  Should he ever be a suitor

  Unto sweeter eyes than mine.”

  And read her own self-revelation again in “A Denial,”

  “We have met late — it is too late to meet,

  O friend, not more than friend!”

  But the denial breaks down, and the last lines tell the story:

  “Here’s no more courage in my soul to say

  ‘Look in my face and see.’”

  And in that last line of “Insufficiency,”

  “I love thee so, Dear, that I only can leave thee.”

  In “Question and Answer,” in “Proof and Disproof,” “A Valediction,” “Loved Once,” and “Inclusions,” he who reads between the lines and has the magic of divination may read the story of her inner life.

  In the poem “Confessions” is touched a note of mystical, spiritual romance, spiritual tragedy, wholly of the inner life, that entirely differentiates from any other poetic expression of Mrs. Browning. In one stanza occur these lines:

  “The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and by night;

  Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, if ever so light.”

  Even with all allowance for the imagination of the poet, these lines reveal such feeling, such tremulous susceptibility, that with less intellectual balance than was hers, combined with such lack of physical vigor, would almost inevitably have resulted in failure of poise. The current of spiritual energy was so strong with Elizabeth Barrett as to largely take the place of greater physical strength. That she never relapsed into the conditions of morbid invalidism is a marvel, and it is also an impressive testimony to the power of spiritual energy to control and determine physical conditions.

  All through that summer the letters run on, daily, semi-daily. Of his work Browning writes that he shall be “prouder to begin one day, — may it be soon! — with your hand in mine from the beginning.” Miss Barrett, referring to the Earl of Compton, who is reported from Rome as having achieved some prominence as a painter, proceeds to say:

  “People in general would rather be Marquises than Roman artists, consulting their own wishes and inclination. I, for my part, ever since I could speak my mind and knew it, always openly and inwardly preferred the glory of those who live by their heads, to the opposite glory of those who carry other people’s arms. So much for glory. Happiness goes the same way to my fancy. There is something fascinating to me in that Bohemian way of living.... All the conventions of society cut so close and thin, that the soul can see through.... Beyond, above. It is real life as you say ... whether at Rome or elsewhere. I am very glad that you like simplicity in habits of life — it has both reasonableness and sanctity.... I am glad that you — who have had temptation enough, more than enough, I am sure, in every form — have lived in the midst of this London of ours, close to the great social vortex, yet have kept so safe, and free, and calm, and pure from the besetting sins of our society.”

  Browning, in one letter, alluding to the prevailing stupidity of the idea that genius and domestic happiness are incompatible, says: “We will live the real answer, will we not?... A man of genius mistreats his wife; well, take away the genius, — does he so instantly improve?”

  Of the attitude of his family toward their marriage he writes:

  “My family all love you, dearest, — you cannot conceive my father’s and mother’s childlike faith in goodness — and my sister is very high-spirited, and quick of apprehension — so as to seize the true point of the case at once.... Last night I asked my father, who was absorbed over some old book, if he should not be glad to see his new daughter? — to which he, starting, replied, ‘Indeed I shall’; with such a fervor as to make my mother laugh, — not abated by his adding: ‘And how I should be glad of her seeing Sarianna!’”

  And she writes:

  “Shall we go to Greece, then, Robert? Let us, if you like it. When we have used a little the charm of your Italy,... I should like to see Athens with my living eyes.... Athens was in all the dreams I dreamed, before I knew you. Why should we not see Athens, and Egypt, too, and float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids? All of it is more possible now, than walking up the street seemed to me last year.”

  And he writes that he always felt her “Wine of Cyprus” poem to fill his heart “with unutterable desires.”

  To book-lovers the question as to how many books may be taken on a journey, or what volumes, indeed, may be left behind, is a vital one. The reader will smile sympathetically at Miss Barrett’s consultation with Browning as to whether, if they do “achieve the peculiar madness of going to Italy,” they could take any books? And whether it would be well to so arrange that they should not take duplicates? He advises the narrowest compass for luggage. “We can return for what we want, or procure it abroad,” he says, made wise by his two Italian journeys; and he adds:

  “I think the fewer books we take the better; they take up room, — and the wise way always seemed to me to read at home, and open one’s eyes and see abroad. A critic somewhere mentioned that as my characteristic — there were two other poets he named placed in novel circumstances ... in a great wood, for instance, Mr. Trench would begin opening books to see how woods were treated ... the other man would set to writing poetry forthwith, — and R. B. would sit still and learn how to write after! A pretty compliment, I thought that. But, seriously, there must be a great library at Pisa (with that University) and abroad they are delighted to facilitate such matters.... I have read in a chamber of the Doges’ palace at Venice painted all over by Tintoretto, walls and ceiling, and at Rome there is a library with a learned priest always kept ready ‘to solve any doubts that may arise.’”

  Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married on September 12, 1846, in the church of St. Pancras, Marylebone, the only witnesses being his cousin, James Silverthorne, and her maid, Wilson. To have taken her sisters into her confidence would have been to expose them to the fairly insane wrath of her father. “I hate and loathe everything which is clandestine — we both do, Robert and I,” said Mrs. Browning later; but this was the only possible way. Had Mr. Browning spoken to her father in the usual manner, “he would have been forbidden the house without a moment’s scruple,” she explained to a friend; “and I should have been incapacitated from any after exertion by the horrible scenes to which, as a thing of course, I should have been exposed.... I cannot bear some words. In my actual state of physical wea
kness, it would have been the sacrifice of my whole life — of my convictions, of my affections, and, above all, of what the person dearest to me persisted in calling his life, and the good of it — if I had observed that ‘form.’ Therefore I determined not to observe it, and I consider that in not doing so, I sinned against no duty. That I was constrained to act clandestinely, and did not choose to do so, God is my witness. Also, up to the very last, we stood in the light of day for the whole world, if it please, to judge us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house. He came twice a week to see me, openly in the sight of all.”

  In no act of her life did Mrs. Browning more impressively reveal her good sense than in this of her marriage. “I had long believed such an act,” she said, “the most strictly personal of one’s life, — to be within the rights of every person of mature age, man or woman, and I had resolved to exercise that right in my own case by a resolution which had slowly ripened. All the other doors of life were shut to me, and shut me as in a prison, and only before this door stood one whom I loved best and who loved me best, and who invited me out through it for the good’s sake he thought I could do him.”... To a friend she explained her long refusal to consent to the marriage, fearing that her delicate health would make it “ungenerous” in her to yield to his entreaty; but he replied that

  “he would not tease me, he would wait twenty years if I pleased, and then, if life lasted so long for both of us, then, when it was ending, perhaps, I might understand him and feel that I might have trusted him.... He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the fulfillment of the brightest dream which should exclude me, in any possible world.”

  She continues:

  “I tell you so much that you may see the manner of man I had to do with, and the sort of attachment which for nearly two years has been drawing and winning me. I know better than any in the world, indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said before me, that ‘Robert Browning is great in every thing.’... Now may I not tell you that his genius, and all but miraculous attainments, are the least things in him, the moral nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew him admit.”

  After the marriage ceremony Mrs. Browning drove with her maid to the home of Mr. Boyd, resting there, as if making a morning call on a familiar friend, until joined by her sisters, who took her for a little drive on Hampstead Heath. For five days she remained in her father’s house, and during this time Browning could not bring himself to call and ask for his wife as “Miss Barrett,” so they arranged all the details of their journey by letter. On September 19 they left for Paris, and the last one of these immortal letters, written the evening before their departure, from Mrs. Browning to her husband, contains these words:

  “By to-morrow at this time I shall have you, only, to love me, my beloved! You, only! As if one said, God, only! And we shall have Him beside, I pray of Him!”

  With her maid, Mrs. Browning walked out of her father’s house the next day, meeting her husband at a bookseller’s around the corner of the street, and they drove to the station, leaving for Southampton to catch the night boat to Havre.

  Never could the world have understood the ineffable love and beauty and nobleness of the characters of both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, had these letters been withheld from the public. Quite aside from the deeper interest of their personal revelation, — the revelation of such nobleness and such perfect mutual comprehension and tenderness of sympathy as are here revealed, — the pages are full of interesting literary allusion and comment, of wit, repartee, and of charm that defies analysis. It was a wise and generous gift when the son of the poets, Robert Barrett Browning, gave these wonderful letters to the reading public. The supreme test of literature is that which contributes to the spiritual wealth of the world. Measured by this standard, these are of the highest literary order. No one can fail to realize how all that is noblest in manhood, all that is holiest in womanhood, is revealed in this correspondence.

  Edmund Clarence Stedman, after reading these letters, said: “It would have been almost a crime to have permitted this wonderful, exceptional interchange of soul and mind, between these two strong, ‘excepted’ beings, to leave no trace forever.”

  Robert Barrett Browning, in referring to his publication of this correspondence in a conversation with the writer of this volume, remarked that he really had no choice in the matter, as the Apochryphal legends and myths and improvisations that had even then begun to weave themselves about the remarkable and unusual story of the acquaintance, courtship, and marriage of his parents, could only be dissipated by the simple truth, as revealed in their own letters.

  Their love took its place in the spiritual order; it was a bond that made itself the mystic force in their mutual development and achievement; and of which the woman, whose reverence for the Divine Life was the strongest element in her nature, could yet say, —

  “And I, who looked for only God, found thee!”

  Life, as well as Literature, would have been the poorer had not Mr. Barrett Browning so wisely and generously enriched both by the publication of this correspondence.

  Not the least among the beautiful expressions that have been made by those spirits so touched to fine issues as to enter into the spiritual loveliness of these letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, is a sonnet by a New England poet, Rev. William Brunton, — a poet who “died too soon,” but whose love for the poetry of the Brownings was as ardent as it was finely appreciative:

  “Oh! dear departed saints of highest song,

  Behind the screen of time your love lay hid,

  Its fair unfoldment was in life forbid —

  As doing such divine affection wrong,

  But now we read with interest deep and strong,

  And lift from off the magic jar the lid,

  And lo! your spirit stands the clouds amid

  And speaks to us in some superior tongue!

  “Devotion such as yours is heavenly-wise,

  And yet the possible of earth ye show;

  Ye dwellers in the blue of summer skies,

  Through you a finer love of love we know;

  It is as if the angels moved with men,

  And key of Paradise were found again!”

  CHAPTER VI. 1846-1850

  “And on her lover’s arm she leant

  And round her waist she felt it fold,

  And far across the hills they went

  To that new world which is the old.

  Across the hills, and far away,

  Beyond their utmost purple rim,

  Beyond the night, beyond the day,

  Through all the world she followed him.”

  Marriage and Italy— “In that New World” — The Haunts of Petrarca — The Magic Land — In Pisa — Vallombrosa— “Un Bel Giro” — Guercino’s Angel — Casa Guidi — Birth of Robert Barrett Browning — Bagni di Lucca— “Sonnets from the Portuguese” — The Enchantment of Italy.

  Paris, “and such a strange week it was,” wrote Mrs. Browning to Miss Mitford; “whether in the body, or out of the body, I can scarcely tell. Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure by my even thinking of him at all.” The journey from London to Paris was not then quite the swift and easy affair it now is, the railroad between Paris and Havre not being then completed beyond Rouen; still, such an elixir of life is happiness that Mrs. Browning arrived in the French Capital feeling much better than when she left London. Mrs. Jameson had only recently taken leave of Miss Barrett on her sofa, and sympathetically offered to take her to Italy herself for the winter with her niece; Miss Barrett had replied: “Not only am I grateful to you, but happy to be grateful to you,” but she had given no hint of the impending marriage. Mrs. Jameson’s surprise, on receiving a note from Mrs. Browning, saying she was in Paris, was so great that her niece, Geraldine Bate (afterward Mrs. MacPherson of Rome), asserted that her aunt’s amazement was “almost comical.” Mrs. Jameson lost no time
in persuading the Brownings to join her and her niece at their quiet pension in the Rue Ville l’Eveque, where they remained for a week, — this “strange week” to Mrs. Browning.

  In Paris they visited the galleries of the Louvre, but did little sight-seeing beyond, “being satisfied with the idea of Paris,” she said.

  To a friend Mrs. Jameson wrote:

  “I have also here a poet and a poetess — two celebrities who have run away and married under circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as render imprudence the height of prudence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I know not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this prosaic world.”